There are times when I feel like I am in the US. And I know that defeats the purpose of being here in Peru, but it is so comforting sometimes to have some of the reminders from home. For example, this past weekend I went into our capital city, Piura, for a meeting. That means all of the volunteers from my region and a region north of us, Tumbes, come into the city. So for one, it’s English, all the time, which is really nice sometimes. And we get time to vent on all the gripes of our sites. There was something about this visit that I realized we were all going through a phase together. Most of us were extremely annoyed with our host family, or something going on in our site. So it was nice to share that stuff with each other, and in most cases we could relate to one another.
It was also the first trip I had made a lone. My site mate wanted to stay behind because he had a soccer game, and I wanted to go to be able to get some stuff done. So I did it all alone, which I didn’t mind. But it’s nice to have someone there sometimes because crazy stuff happens or crazy people talk, and it’s nice to have someone to look at in those situations. For example, the way my trip works, is first I take a taxi out of my valley, and the taxis only go when they are filled to capacity. The taxis are small beat up station wagons, and they will put 2 people in the front passenger seat, and 3-4 people in the back seat, and sometimes someone will sit in the trunk. This particular trip, I was the first one at the taxi, and the trunk was filled with cases of empty beer bottles, we could barely fit my stuff back there. But by the time we left the valley, we had accumulated a full car of people. However, on the way out, we stopped and they actually crammed someone in the trunk, I am not sure how they did it, but they did it. It was crazy. So that ride, usually lasts 30-45min to get out of the valley. Then we get into Las Lomas, which is the big city of my district. From there, we can either take a bus or a taxi. Usually I take a taxi to the bus station in the next town simply because it is much faster and save me time. Those are usually small car taxis, and again, they fill them to capacity before we go. That is about a 20-30min ride to Tambogrande, the next town on the way to Piura, it is bigger then Las Lomas, and it has a bus terminal, and that is where the taxi takes us. From there I take a bus, sometimes a big one, other times a small rough looking one, and my bags usually go on top on inside, and sometimes in the bottom. This bus ride is usually 2 hours long. So this time, I was alone and the bus was kind of empty, so I go to the back and grab a seat, and there are like 20 empty ones back there. Then this older lady comes on, and she oddly looks at the millions of seats around me, and guess where she sit…YEP…in my seat with me. I don’t get it…tons and tons of seats, but she had to be in my bubble. The bus never filled up, so I looked the entire time at all the empty seats and couldn’t figure out why I was sharing one.
Usually in Piura we seek out food as close to American as we can get. There is a place called Carbon Burger which is open at night, and it has some of the best burgers, even better then some that I’ve had in the US, so there is no complaining there. We also do a little shopping while were in the city. Normally we go to the market because it is so cheap. But it’s crowded, and trying to find the section of the market that has what you need can be complicated too. And inside, it is incredibly hot. Plus, it’s dangerous and you have to hide your money and stuff. This weekend one of the volunteers had her necklace ripped right off her neck while she was walking through. So this weekend, I decided to avoid it, I just wasn’t in the mood. So I went to the “Peruvian Wal-Mart” instead to pick up a few things. While we were there we had heard about a burger king being somewhere in the vicinity. So we decided to look for it. We ended up at this new mall that I had never heard of. It had a Peruvian “home depot”, and it had this store called “tottus” which reminds me more of target. I had seen lots of commercials for it, but I didn’t think we had one here so I was really excited when we found it. But the best discovery of the new mall, was STARBUCKS. It is under construction, but it is coming soon! I was really excited about that. There was also a KFC and pizza hut inside, and there is a really nice movie theater coming soon. So that was a great discovery. Not many of the volunteers have found it yet, so they were excited about it too.
One of the nights, we decided to have a little girls night, so we went to this Italian restaurant and got dinner and drinks. A popular drink here, other then beer, is pisco sours. I am not positive what is in it, but it tastes a lot like a margarita. It had pisco in it, which is a liquor here, but they use a blender to blend some kind of egg whites or something, so there is this foamy sweet layer on top of the drink. They are good, but strong, I can usually only handle one at a time.
The next day, we decided to go to Catacaos, which is a small touristy town outside of Piura. It is an artisans market and a lot of local people sell stuff to the tourists there. We had been there one time before and at a really good restaurant. So we went to look at stuff and find the restaurant. Once we were there we asked a moto taxi driver if he could take us to the restaurant. He said he knew it, but once he started driving we could tell he didn’t know what he was talking about. The name of the restaurant had the word blue in it. So he drives us to a blue building and tells us that the restaurant moved and that is where it was. Well since were not stupid we knew that wasn’t true, the building was shut up and had a for sale sign outside. We made sure to point that out, and then he took us somewhere else. The restaurant looked like the one we thought, but it had a different name. Once we were inside we convinced ourselves it was the same restaurant. Even though the inside looked different and the menu was a little different. it’s a seafood restaurant and it all seemed to add up. But afterwards we walked outside, and literally next door was the restaurant we had been looking for. We felt pretty stupid!
So the rest of the weekend was finishing up work and a meeting. But after all of that, the volunteers who had stayed wanted to go watch college football, after a lot of searching around the city, we found a bar that the game was playing on. Surprisingly, for it being Peru, the bar was really crowded. But it was fun, I definitely did not feel like I was in Peru, surrounded by Americans and watching football, it felt like home. That really doesn’t happen too often.
When I got back to my site with my host sister we were sitting down having a talk and they presented a great idea for me to work on while I am here. They really want a playground for the kids. I think this is a great idea. The kids don’t really have anything to do. Other then mess with the dogs and run around, they don’t have a lot to play with and it makes me sad. As I am writing this, the kids are playing with an English/Spanish puzzle my Mom sent me, and they keep doing it over and over again. I love that they get so excited about the things I can share with them, I just wish there was more for them to do. So I think I am going to make the playground a project towards the end of the year and see where I can get money from to help with it.
I am excited and nervous because tomorrow my summer school classes start. Last week, BJ and I put together a radio spot, and apparently our commercial has been airing in the valley, so I just hope that kids show up for it tomorrow. Today, BJ’s was actually supposed to start, but there is construction going on at his school and the principal thinks next week would be better, so I really hope we can start there soon. He has been doing a lot of work in his community trying to recruit people. And we bought a lot of stuff to prepare for it too. We are teaching art, health, English and American sports (which is really just kickball and dodge ball). But all of our art projects are related to health topics. We are going to make and decorate trash cans and hand washing stations, and little animal containers to put tooth brushes. So it should be cute…just as long as the kids show up!
So wish me luck!!!! I’ll update soon!!!
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