Sunday, September 4, 2011
Hello all, it’s been a couple days. Today has been an interesting one…but a good one! I woke up around 8 and stumbled out into the kitchen that’s open-air style to the sound of buzzing. I looked up in a tired stupor to see a pretty decent amount of bees taking over the kitchen area (I don’t want to say swarm because that might be a little dramatic but there were definitely dozens). I realized I must have been in Peru long enough or something had changed but it didn’t faze me nor did it scare me. I hopped into the shower because I knew they wouldn’t want to mess with me in there. While I was in the shower my host mom started a smoke-screen fire out of newspaper to deter them. Around 8:45 during breakfast I heard the Peruvian National Anthem blasting…this meant for whatever reason they were doing the flag-raising event that I was about to go to early. I went anyway to find nobody in the plaza at five minutes to nine when it usual starts…In my nice dress close I walked over to the little shop with a few turtle-speed computers in it. This place has a daughter and her almost deaf dad. She’s always yelling at him at the top of her lungs so he can hear but he’s always still confused.
After missing the flag raising and updating the interwebs a little bit I returned home welcomed by the collection of bees again when I walked in. I guess they were hanging out during the morning because the candy-making place down the street attracted them. My host mom, Elvira, said it was weird because that hadn’t happened before.
For the rest of the morning I worked on some writing and researching until eating for lunch and going to this birthday party in the afternoon. Apparently without knowing I was supposed to bring my guitar (I bought a new guitar yesterday in Chiclayo by the way). I ended up partaking (with little choice) in the drinking circle of beer and Pisco shots. Pisco is grape fermented liquor that basically tastes like some kind of mixture between vodka and tequila. It was a pretty interesting and fun time. A couple of drunk guys were basically yelling jokes at each other all the while begging me to go get my guitar. At this point it was too close to the youth group/library planning committee meeting to go get the guitar.
After the party my host mom and I went to the youth group. It was great and the kids were a bit rowdy which to be expected but also good kids. We played probably a couple more games than we should have but also got some ideas down for the layout, resources and interests for the library. I’m working with a group of people that Nicole had been working with that have the funding and whatnot to build the library. It’s pretty exciting! I forgot to mention at the party I was also served a second lunch which I had to at least force part of down. Food=love here so you have to at least eat part of it or they assume you don’t like it. After this we returned to eat dinner after a little while of writing more. My host brother and mom had chicken feet in their soup like usual and I said they looked like alien hands and they thought that was funny. Then we joked about the reactions we would get in the U.S. if instead of bringing chicken wings we brought out chicken feet. Haha…deep-fried chicken feet…My brother and I just got back in recently from playing street soccer but he kicked the ball over the roof into our neighbors house and they didn’t answer when we knocked. A little bit of guitar playing and that brings us up to about now.
Yesterday was a much earlier morning than intended. I arrived in Chiclayo, the capital city of Lambayeque, on Friday. So another volunteer yesterday (Sat.) woke me up at about 7:30 to go shopping. Well this isn’t too early considering tomorrow I’ll be up at 7, but for a Saturday morning at a hostal it’s pretty early. Lots of shopping was done, including the purchase of a new guitar for the next two years. The brand is Morris…never heard of it but it’s a solid guitar. It feels at least as good as Sandy (main acoustic from U.S.) if not better. I also got a lamp but the lady helping me at the store picked out the wrong bulbs for me so I won’t be able to use it until I return to Chiclayo in two weeks. I’m not a huge fan of the bright white prison lighting I’m rocking in my room right now. I love my room as is but once I get this lamp rocking with the nice warm yellow lighting I’ll feel right at home. I’ve always been a huge soft lighting lamp kinda guy. So that’s probably the saddest thing that’s really happened to me since being at site. Other than missing all of you!! Other than shopping yesterday I got some nifty business cards printed out and walked around for about an hour trying to find a place to print them before hand. The market is HUGE and disorganized and crazy. I’m definitely always the spectacle too. My second name is gringo by now.
I returned to my house in Zaña around 8 last night for dinner. It was pretty chill. We played my new guitar for a while and cleaned it up. I really am happy with the new addition. I’m thinking it’ll probably be hard to not bring it back to the U.S…I just might have to.
Friday was a decently busy day before heading to Chiclayo. I passed around to different institutions in the morning with my community partner, Molly. I also helped her bring some sacks of rice, sugar and oil to a nearby town. Afterwards I designed my business cards and worked on some stuff in the afternoon after lunch. I must admit a siesta did take place this day in the afternoon. The nature of my schedule has me up early and late with a lull in the middle of the day so don’t look at me like I’m lazy. J
Thursday night I went to the orchestra music practice. It started off kinda rough. It supposedly starts at 8, which definitely means no earlier than 8:30 that people show up. The keyboardist and mastermind of the group showed up at about 9:30 and between moody ups and downs we ended up being there until past midnight. At one point I started dancing with random girls standing in the doorway to lift the morale of the group. Apparently it’s pretty funny when this white boy dances. Overall it went well but there were times where I was kinda worried…namely when the double keyboard setup crashed down off the stand. The director of the group is getting his brother in Japan to send an electric guitar so I can play in the band. They are taking a trip to Ecuador in February that I’ll hopefully be able to join in on. I think it’ll be feasible because apparently between December and March Zaña is pretty much a ghost town because of school breaks. Whelp, my eyes are falling shut so I’m gonna say goodnight and good luck. Chau!!
Zack In Peru 