so let's see what went on these past few days!
1. last wednesday was my host sister's birthday! started the day with a quick meeting with my youth group before heading back to the house to help prepare CEVICHE. so awesome. my host grandpa is an amazing chef and he had me and my cousin/other PCT (i feel like all the PCTs are related in some way or another...) help him cut the fish, garlic, ginger, peppers, etc, add random spices from small plastic packages, cut and squeeze limes and oranges, and etc. before putting it all together to create awesome deliciousness in my mouth.
later that night, i made cheesecake. there are no graham crackers and no sour cream so i substituted and gave up on measuring things and left it cooking in the oven for about 2 hours (the oven does not allow you a specific temp, only a broken knob that reads "high" and "low." so bake at 350F? yea, shut up recipe, you don't know anything.)
whatever. cheesecake turned out tasting like cheesecake and that made me happy! plus, a bunch of PCTs and the whole family were down in the big room and we danced for a long time. learned some new dances that i can't do because i'm an uncoordinated mess, but watching my grandpa dance with my grandma to some crazy pop song was just too good for words.
2. thursday was the day of our first youth group in our community and it turned out better than i thought. for us youth development volunteers, practice is key and we were told that we needed to practice planning/forming/evaluating during these 3 months of training. this makes a ton of sense, except that none of it is sustainable and all of it is extremely stressful when you think of how very little time any of us have to actually prepare. for example- during our 2 years of service, we spend the first 3 months getting to know the community, to understand its needs and figure out what the community wants from us before we begin any projects that are meant to be sustainable. during our 10 weeks of training, we have less than 7 of those weeks to find youth, plan activities and discussions that cover the 3 goals of our program, and we need to meet with these youth 3-5 times before we leave. yea... not a perfect system but whaddya gonna do?
3. friday was the day of our YD skit. the group i'm in put our spanish skillz into use to create skits that we then present to the rest. our skit was on saying no to drugs and basically how to say you want to use a condom when your partner disagrees. both of them were hysterical and informative, if i say so myself. especially the condom one, which was acted out by 2 others in my group and consisted of one saying things like, "just this one time!" or "but condoms are messy and they smell weird" and the other responding, "once is all it takes!" or "sex is like that"
yea. hysterical.
afterwards, we went to our PCVC (coordinator)'s parents' house for a party of sorts. we had american food (hot dogs, hamburgers) but i was all about the guac, yo. that guac was freakin amazing and it showed. for the most part, all the PCTs ate like they had been starved for weeks. i, for example, would have eaten the guac with my hands had i not held onto some form of propriety and used a spoon to shovel it onto my plate. where it was promptly eaten using my hands. and chips. but mostly hands. we had a great time just talking, sharing a few dinamicas (small ice breaker games and other sorts that YD must always have in the back of their minds that facilitate teaching certain concepts to youth) and eating.
4. saturday was a trip to lima to see programa educadores de calle, which is a program that helps children living in the streets. it's rather heartbreaking, realizing that children can't be children. what's great about this program is that it accepts any child they can get a hold of. for many of them, it's having a place to go after school to do homework and receive help rather than spending those hours with their family, helping sell predominately produce. my guess is that many of them leave the program to go work but at least at this time, they are given a few hours to enjoy their youth and to continue their education. there're also sports things, which i went to go see. again, i had a blast but it was sad to know what these kids live through. their lives, their education, drugs and sex. it's pretty devastating but it's programs like this that help give me hope!
saturday, btw, was also 'dia del amigo' or 'friend day' and what a day! not only did i go to lima, where i spent the vast majority (read: all) of the spending money given to us every few days (i had a lot of food. food food food. like pinkberry. fro yo up in this place, what? awesome) but i also went out to dance at a club! it was kind of awful because the club was PACKED and i was sweating like a crazy mofo but it was really interesting to note the social similarities between clubs here and those in the US.
for example: if you're a girl, you will wait 15-20 minutes in order to use the bathroom. and it doesn't matter where you are, there will always be a few girls who are just rude and make the bathrooms their temporary homes, holing up in there for a solid 5-10 minutes only to emerge with fresh makeup and a cup of freakin tea (not really. but COME ON. you don't go to the bathroom to chat with your friend, you go in there to pee. that's IT. anything more and you are going to walk through a gauntlet of glares and muttering curses from a line of 10 other girls waiting behind you.)
another one: if you're a girl, doesn't matter what you wear or what you're doing, guys will want to dance with you and some of them may get too bold. at this point, go to the bathroom. it will give you 15-20 minutes of away time, during which they will hopefully move on to some other person. if not, at least you will have some distraction as the 2 girls emerge from the single toilet bathroom to the glares and mutterings of the others in line.
i went to the club, btw, with my sis (older sis, not younger), her bf, my PCT cousin AND A NEW PCV COUSIN! woo! she came to visit her host fam (aka, my aunt and uncle) this weekend and i got to meet her! basically, she's awesome. she played rugby. that kind of lets her jump from neutral to amazing in an instant. she's working in water and sanitation down in nazca right now and just talking to her had me really excited about my future in PC again :D huzzah!
5. finally, monday was the 4th of july! our classes and meetings were pushed aside for the day, to spend time with the small business development group joining the youth development group for a day of american things, like burgers (meh) and hot dogs (well, hot dogs in burger buns) and football (american). we went to a place with some grass and 2 alpacas! ALPACAS! they were the craziest looking things ever and one of my friends decided that the big, brownish shaggy one was reminiscent of an eewok. hilarious.
pues, that's all for now! if i can think of anything else that happened today, i'll let you know.
hope all is well back in the states! and here's a little peruvian tip: always keep toilet paper in your pocket. ALWAYS. because most public bathrooms will not have it. except try to remember to take them out when you're doing laundry (by hand).
also, no- you do not flush toilet paper. and yes- you will forget this the first few days and curse yourself when you're staring at the tp you just dropped in the toilet by habit. don't worry about it right now, but stop it cause you're gonna piss off some sanitation ppl.
chau!
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