this is usually in reference to my inability to speak castellano (aka spanish). turns out, i was right about the whole 'language is gonna be my biggest weakness' but it's one i'm working on every day. currently, i'm at the point where i can basically understand what's being said to me, with some confusion here and there, but my ability to speak is, at best, awful. i can piece together a few phrases but it's really frustrating when i want to describe something and the only thing that comes out is, "what movies do i like? well, i like... movies... comical. uhm. what? oh! yea! comedies. i like comedies. what else? uhm. i don't know." errrggghhhh. sigh, poco a poco.
in other news, last night i went out to chosico, which is like the bigger city, to meet up with youth development volunteers and some small business development volunteers (we were split up cause our group is so huge). i was surprised that so many SBDs showed up! it was super nice seeing them all again, but i'm terrible with names and clearly forgot a few of them : / it's ok, i had a few drinks (gaseosos are sodas, of which peruvians drink a lot of. cerveza is beer, but cusquena is the brand here and i think it tastes a bit too much like natty light, but maybe that's just me.) and managed to remember quite a few after a bit of yelling. we went to this loud, chill place where i found myself shouting instead of talking, because i could barely hear myself speak. which doesn't really mean that the shouting was necessary, just that i couldn't hear myself cause i'm practically deaf and i took to shouting to make up for it. we went to a karaoke bar afterwards, where i tried a pisco sour and discussed the finer points of pisco. i tried to sing 'hey jude' cause it was there, but we left before it was my turn :( ah well, my friends will have to endure my singing voice some other day. entonces, we crammed ourselves into a little taxi and took it back up to buenos aires, just before my curfew~
what a way to end a week! my brain has been kind of dead for a long time as it's been focused on trying to figure out what's been going on for so long, so it was nice giving it a break and letting it basically turn off for a few hours. now i'm recharged and ready for 9 more weeks of training!
actually, i woke up this morning (kind of late... it's saturday!) and washed my clothes by hand. i don't know why i'm so proud about this, just that it's the first time i've done it and now i have clean clothes! mi mama showed me how and now my clothes are drying on a line. it's kind of weird having my underwear just hanging outside for the world to see, but meh. so's everyone else's, i guess. it's kind of a strange metaphor for my adventures here. i'm really hoping my 2 years in peru will expose parts of me that are intimate, that even i am currently unaware of. how do i react to stressful situations, where nothing seems to be going well? do i have the ability to initiate programs in a community that i have no history in? how do i react to these kinds of experiences? what other stories can i create in this life of mine? i don't know, but i'm excited to know!
i should probably calm it down a little though. i'm definitely mildly ill right now, with a cold or something that makes me cough like i'm on death's door and talk like i'm a pack a day smoker but whatever. i'll take some nyquil and hope for the best! tomorrow is father's day, so i hope i can coordinate a skype chat with my dad. i think i'm going to try to speak with mi papa in espana too. dunno what i'm going to say but it'll be fine. anyway, i'm going to sit in front of skype and wish really really hard that my family in cali decides it's a good idea to maybe check if i'm on!
chaufa (which is slang for bye, but is also a type of food).
edit: p.s. here's a fun fact: there are wild turkeys running around the place i train at in santa eulalia. four of them. 3 dark ones, and 1 pale turkey. they do NOT gobble. i would, in fact, say the scream. also, the horse that was tied up in front has broken free and was last seen running up and down the street. there's also a chicken with like 10 chicks pacing that same street. there used to be an alpaca, but it died. damn, i want an alpaca.
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