13/10/2008Neat things from the last couple days:
I bought a guitar. She’s a gnarly, gnarly specimen of Bolivian musical craftsmanship. Check out the pic, I think it speaks for itself. Names I’m considering: white thunder, black lightening, or any other combination of colors and badass weather phenomena. Suggestions welcome.
We had a temblor, or tremor from an earthquake. There was a huge earthquake farther south in Peru last year that registered something like an 8.0 on the Richter scale (in other words a major, major earthquake), and tens of thousands of people died. So when even a mild, five-second tremor hits us here, people freak out a little. I was eating dinner when I felt a little shake, which I thought was pretty cool, but the whole family immediately ran outside in front of the house, grabbing the little girls somewhat hysterically. To me it seemed a bit of an over-reaction, but they don’t mess around with earthquakes around here, and for damn good reason.
My host mom told me today that said temblor is the reason that the weather has turned chilly the last couple days.
Thousands of “Hell Yeah!!”s went up from all corners of the globe when Barack promised to double the Peace Corps if elected. Hell yeah. On the flipside, if McCain wins I just hope we’re one of the “handful of other vital programs” that escapes his funding cuts. That would suck.
It rained. People were bewildered. I loved it.
In Wat/San we learned how to make hand-washing stations out of old Gatorade bottles. Turns out the squirt tops not only look super cool, but are actually pretty useful, too.
We had our first session with our new language groups, and it was a change for the better. We’ve got a rad teacher who plays bass in a rock band in Lima and has a girlfriend from Cincinnatti. Even on day one we got into some good debates, learned some Peruvian slang and pickup lines, and read newspaper articles about the national team’s loss to Bolivia over the weekend, as well as the oil scandal that just last week sent most of the current ministerial cabinet packing, including the PM himself. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
12/10/2008
It’s a rare day when I don’t learn something new about my family. To start with, it took us a couple weeks to realize that three of the gringos in Chacrasana are actually “cousins,” given that our host mothers are all sisters. I had been to my buddy Brian’s house at least three times before realizing that his host mother and father already knew my name where I lived and were, in fact, my aunt and uncle. From there I had a series of revelations, like that two of the guys we play soccer with are also my cousins: one is Brian’s host brother who is in his fifth year of auto mechanic college in Chosica, and the other is (someone’s) brother, who also happens to be working on the second story of our house. (Which by the way is coming along surprisingly quickly – the bricks walls are about halfway done I think, but there’s still a massive pile of them in front of the house.)
In addition, for some reason the last week or so has been a seemingly endless series of visits from aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins, nieces, nephews, and any other relative you can think of. They come in all shapes and sizes: some old, some younger; some tall, some short and squat; some funny, others more reserved; some vulgar, others religious; some drinkers and some not. Virtually all are exceptionally friendly, and some are more noteworthy than others. One uncle who lives in town and comes by pretty regularly always makes a reference to the fact that (apparently) St. Matthew was a prophet, and that therefore I’m going to follow in his footsteps. Or something to that effect. He always laughs, though, which makes me feel a little less uneasy. One man I met down at Brian’s house I later found out was a visiting uncle from the selva, or jungle on the other side of the mountains where my mother’s family is from. I also learned that he’s a crazy, hilarious jack-of-all-trades kind of guy who claims to have five different mujeres at once and loves to booze.
Another uncle I met last night and today is an absolute piece of work. He’s the husband of another one of my mother’s sisters (who was also in town, so I met her, their son, and their nephew…not even going to make an attempt at names), and they live in the port of Callao on the other side of Lima. This guy also hits the cerveza pretty hard, and after sharing a few cold ones with him this morning (Sunday, mind you, and after an all-night party at the little squatter town above ours), he was happily snoring on the couch while the rest of the extended family enjoyed a delicious lunch of a stew made from peanuts, corn flour, and cilantro all blended together, with a piece of chicken and a piece of yuca per bowl, followed by the main course of grilled anticuchos (beef hearts), potatoes, and choclo or corn on the cob (much like the American version, but with bigger kernels and eaten with a really powerful, bitter cheese instead of butter and salt). Yeah, still diggin’ the food. Anyway this particular uncle invited me to his house next Sunday to try his brand of ceviche, which is raw fish cured with lime juice and served with any number of accompanying sides. It’s a little disappointing that I haven’t tried the national dish in a whole month here, so I’m hoping that will work out. I’d say there’s about a thirty-five percent chance I make it there next week. We’ll see.
I’ve also been learning more and more about my own – nuclear – family. My father is the oldest of somewhere around ten (?) children, and my mother has about half that many siblings (most of whom I’ve now met…I think). Rosillo’s husband the marine (my brother-in-law) will be coming home this week for Aracely’s fifth birthday, so it will be cool to finally meet him. Our only contact this far has been a really awkward phone conversation on about my second day here.
I’ve noticed this habit – held by pretty much all my family members – to create lists of things during conversations. I don’t really know what else to say about it, but it cracks me up. For example, if I mention a fruit I tried that I really liked, anyone from my father to my sister to my niece to the token crazy uncle visiting for the weekend will launch into a list of all the fruits they can think of. The same applies to traditional dishes, natural disasters and sub-categories of weather phenomena, cars, and any other topic. Often different family members will alternate naming things, which makes for some pretty serious lists. I know it’s just one more way the family is making an effort to help me adjust to the culture and learn about the country, for which I’m very grateful. Still a funny habit, though.
11/10/2008
As in most countries that aren’t America, fútbol is the national pastime here in el Perú. Games are being played all the time among friends, co-workers, drinking buddies, and mortal enemies alike. There are couple different varieties of the game, which was not something I had really anticipated. The most common is known as fulbito, loosely translated as “little fútbol.” It’s a six-on-six game played with a smaller ball than we’re used to in the States, and it’s played on concrete courts – canchitas – about the size of small basketball courts. The game is quick, occasionally violent, and a ton of fun.
One of the four communities in which volunteers are currently living is called Tres de Octubre (“Third of October”), and there’s an annual campeonato del fulbito there that lasts a couple weeks, culminating the first week of October in time for the town’s big birthday bash (which, as it turns out, is held right there on the court where the games take place). We’re a pretty young and athletic group, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to enter a team. We ended up being one of the roughly twelve teams in the tournament, and after three weeks or so of games almost every night, we finished somewhere in the middle of the pack: a respectable performance for a bunch of gringos, and by far the best any Peace Corps team has ever done there. The games were super intense and we always had a bunch of subs, not to mention our dedicated fan base of our fellow volunteers and sometimes a couple host family members. We also picked up some local fans, and the sidelines at some of the games turned into crowded social events. The other teams were mostly made up of middle-aged residents of the town, punctuated by the random adolescent superstar. Almost every team had the upper hand as far as outright foot-skills were concerned, but we worked harder than most, and it paid off once in a while. The final week we were cursed, tying four or five games in a row. If we had to create a slogan it would definitely be along the lines of “Yeah but at least we didn’t lose!”
We’ve been playing a bit in Chacrasana, too, with some other guys about our age or older. They play three times a week, and it’s pretty competitive but always friendly. I hadn’t noticed until the other day that there’s a particular two-pitched whistle they all use to call each other out of their houses up and down the hill. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday around 4:30 you can hear it up and down the main drag in town, echoing off the hills on either side. A few minutes later you’ve got a full game and some spectators. Another interesting aspect of the games is the concept of the puesta. The first time we played, we didn’t believe that the losers had to pay the winners one sol (roughly thirty-three cents) for each game lost. So when we lost, we didn’t. The guys seemed to understand our confusion, though, and invited us back. The next few times we haven’t had a full team of volunteers, and once we started mixing up the teams it became apparent that they weren’t pulling our leg, and you do in fact have to pay if you lose. Since then I haven’t lost and have made myself a nice little pile of four or five soles, or about a beer and half’s worth.
The big anniversary party in Tres took place on a chilly Saturday night a couple weeks ago, the night after the last games of the tournament. We had been notified that the town wanted to present our team with some sort of recognition of our participation in the tournament, so after some burgers and beers at my sister’s stand in Chacrasana, we took the combi over to Tres. The party was pretty sad for the first couple hours, with a lot of speeches by members of the junta directiva or town board of directors, and some pretty painful performances by local youth musicians. After a while it picked up, though, and a four man band/comedy troupe played and joked for a good hour or so, preceded by this wild dance by a large group of youths all decked out in shiny, jingling colonial uniforms (to me the males looked like samurai warriors). After a few Pilsen Trujillos we looked around and realized that most of the town had trickled into the general area of the soccer court. Finally, my buddy Ryan, the local rep for the team and our unofficial captain, was asked to get up and give a speech. Wisely, he kept it short and to the point, thanking the town for their hospitality and support. It was a good speech for a not-so-sober gringo. Some time after that, it came to our attention that the host mothers in the neighborhood had gotten together and bought these awesome jerseys for our whole team. This was an incredibly generous gesture on their part, and the jerseys are really nice: white w/ a red diagonal stripe like the Peru national team jerseys, with a “Tres de Octubre” emblem in the corner. Classy.
Speaking of the Peruvian national team, World Cup qualifying started I’m not sure when, but I do know that Peru is somewhere near the bottom of the South America bracket. The top five teams will advance to the mundial, and right now Paraguay is leading with close to twenty points. Argentina and Brazil are also good, as usual. Peru has something like eight points, and the other day I heard was ahead of only Bolivia. Until they played Bolivia today and lost 3-0 in a rout. Peru looked terrible. But it was fun to get some beers and a lunch of, yep, chicken and papas, while watching the game in a bar with a bunch of other fans. Almost like a fall Saturday back home.
I bought a guitar. She’s a gnarly, gnarly specimen of Bolivian musical craftsmanship. Check out the pic, I think it speaks for itself. Names I’m considering: white thunder, black lightening, or any other combination of colors and badass weather phenomena. Suggestions welcome.
We had a temblor, or tremor from an earthquake. There was a huge earthquake farther south in Peru last year that registered something like an 8.0 on the Richter scale (in other words a major, major earthquake), and tens of thousands of people died. So when even a mild, five-second tremor hits us here, people freak out a little. I was eating dinner when I felt a little shake, which I thought was pretty cool, but the whole family immediately ran outside in front of the house, grabbing the little girls somewhat hysterically. To me it seemed a bit of an over-reaction, but they don’t mess around with earthquakes around here, and for damn good reason.
My host mom told me today that said temblor is the reason that the weather has turned chilly the last couple days.
Thousands of “Hell Yeah!!”s went up from all corners of the globe when Barack promised to double the Peace Corps if elected. Hell yeah. On the flipside, if McCain wins I just hope we’re one of the “handful of other vital programs” that escapes his funding cuts. That would suck.
It rained. People were bewildered. I loved it.
In Wat/San we learned how to make hand-washing stations out of old Gatorade bottles. Turns out the squirt tops not only look super cool, but are actually pretty useful, too.
We had our first session with our new language groups, and it was a change for the better. We’ve got a rad teacher who plays bass in a rock band in Lima and has a girlfriend from Cincinnatti. Even on day one we got into some good debates, learned some Peruvian slang and pickup lines, and read newspaper articles about the national team’s loss to Bolivia over the weekend, as well as the oil scandal that just last week sent most of the current ministerial cabinet packing, including the PM himself. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
12/10/2008
It’s a rare day when I don’t learn something new about my family. To start with, it took us a couple weeks to realize that three of the gringos in Chacrasana are actually “cousins,” given that our host mothers are all sisters. I had been to my buddy Brian’s house at least three times before realizing that his host mother and father already knew my name where I lived and were, in fact, my aunt and uncle. From there I had a series of revelations, like that two of the guys we play soccer with are also my cousins: one is Brian’s host brother who is in his fifth year of auto mechanic college in Chosica, and the other is (someone’s) brother, who also happens to be working on the second story of our house. (Which by the way is coming along surprisingly quickly – the bricks walls are about halfway done I think, but there’s still a massive pile of them in front of the house.)
In addition, for some reason the last week or so has been a seemingly endless series of visits from aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins, nieces, nephews, and any other relative you can think of. They come in all shapes and sizes: some old, some younger; some tall, some short and squat; some funny, others more reserved; some vulgar, others religious; some drinkers and some not. Virtually all are exceptionally friendly, and some are more noteworthy than others. One uncle who lives in town and comes by pretty regularly always makes a reference to the fact that (apparently) St. Matthew was a prophet, and that therefore I’m going to follow in his footsteps. Or something to that effect. He always laughs, though, which makes me feel a little less uneasy. One man I met down at Brian’s house I later found out was a visiting uncle from the selva, or jungle on the other side of the mountains where my mother’s family is from. I also learned that he’s a crazy, hilarious jack-of-all-trades kind of guy who claims to have five different mujeres at once and loves to booze.
Another uncle I met last night and today is an absolute piece of work. He’s the husband of another one of my mother’s sisters (who was also in town, so I met her, their son, and their nephew…not even going to make an attempt at names), and they live in the port of Callao on the other side of Lima. This guy also hits the cerveza pretty hard, and after sharing a few cold ones with him this morning (Sunday, mind you, and after an all-night party at the little squatter town above ours), he was happily snoring on the couch while the rest of the extended family enjoyed a delicious lunch of a stew made from peanuts, corn flour, and cilantro all blended together, with a piece of chicken and a piece of yuca per bowl, followed by the main course of grilled anticuchos (beef hearts), potatoes, and choclo or corn on the cob (much like the American version, but with bigger kernels and eaten with a really powerful, bitter cheese instead of butter and salt). Yeah, still diggin’ the food. Anyway this particular uncle invited me to his house next Sunday to try his brand of ceviche, which is raw fish cured with lime juice and served with any number of accompanying sides. It’s a little disappointing that I haven’t tried the national dish in a whole month here, so I’m hoping that will work out. I’d say there’s about a thirty-five percent chance I make it there next week. We’ll see.
I’ve also been learning more and more about my own – nuclear – family. My father is the oldest of somewhere around ten (?) children, and my mother has about half that many siblings (most of whom I’ve now met…I think). Rosillo’s husband the marine (my brother-in-law) will be coming home this week for Aracely’s fifth birthday, so it will be cool to finally meet him. Our only contact this far has been a really awkward phone conversation on about my second day here.
I’ve noticed this habit – held by pretty much all my family members – to create lists of things during conversations. I don’t really know what else to say about it, but it cracks me up. For example, if I mention a fruit I tried that I really liked, anyone from my father to my sister to my niece to the token crazy uncle visiting for the weekend will launch into a list of all the fruits they can think of. The same applies to traditional dishes, natural disasters and sub-categories of weather phenomena, cars, and any other topic. Often different family members will alternate naming things, which makes for some pretty serious lists. I know it’s just one more way the family is making an effort to help me adjust to the culture and learn about the country, for which I’m very grateful. Still a funny habit, though.
11/10/2008
As in most countries that aren’t America, fútbol is the national pastime here in el Perú. Games are being played all the time among friends, co-workers, drinking buddies, and mortal enemies alike. There are couple different varieties of the game, which was not something I had really anticipated. The most common is known as fulbito, loosely translated as “little fútbol.” It’s a six-on-six game played with a smaller ball than we’re used to in the States, and it’s played on concrete courts – canchitas – about the size of small basketball courts. The game is quick, occasionally violent, and a ton of fun.
One of the four communities in which volunteers are currently living is called Tres de Octubre (“Third of October”), and there’s an annual campeonato del fulbito there that lasts a couple weeks, culminating the first week of October in time for the town’s big birthday bash (which, as it turns out, is held right there on the court where the games take place). We’re a pretty young and athletic group, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to enter a team. We ended up being one of the roughly twelve teams in the tournament, and after three weeks or so of games almost every night, we finished somewhere in the middle of the pack: a respectable performance for a bunch of gringos, and by far the best any Peace Corps team has ever done there. The games were super intense and we always had a bunch of subs, not to mention our dedicated fan base of our fellow volunteers and sometimes a couple host family members. We also picked up some local fans, and the sidelines at some of the games turned into crowded social events. The other teams were mostly made up of middle-aged residents of the town, punctuated by the random adolescent superstar. Almost every team had the upper hand as far as outright foot-skills were concerned, but we worked harder than most, and it paid off once in a while. The final week we were cursed, tying four or five games in a row. If we had to create a slogan it would definitely be along the lines of “Yeah but at least we didn’t lose!”
We’ve been playing a bit in Chacrasana, too, with some other guys about our age or older. They play three times a week, and it’s pretty competitive but always friendly. I hadn’t noticed until the other day that there’s a particular two-pitched whistle they all use to call each other out of their houses up and down the hill. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday around 4:30 you can hear it up and down the main drag in town, echoing off the hills on either side. A few minutes later you’ve got a full game and some spectators. Another interesting aspect of the games is the concept of the puesta. The first time we played, we didn’t believe that the losers had to pay the winners one sol (roughly thirty-three cents) for each game lost. So when we lost, we didn’t. The guys seemed to understand our confusion, though, and invited us back. The next few times we haven’t had a full team of volunteers, and once we started mixing up the teams it became apparent that they weren’t pulling our leg, and you do in fact have to pay if you lose. Since then I haven’t lost and have made myself a nice little pile of four or five soles, or about a beer and half’s worth.
The big anniversary party in Tres took place on a chilly Saturday night a couple weeks ago, the night after the last games of the tournament. We had been notified that the town wanted to present our team with some sort of recognition of our participation in the tournament, so after some burgers and beers at my sister’s stand in Chacrasana, we took the combi over to Tres. The party was pretty sad for the first couple hours, with a lot of speeches by members of the junta directiva or town board of directors, and some pretty painful performances by local youth musicians. After a while it picked up, though, and a four man band/comedy troupe played and joked for a good hour or so, preceded by this wild dance by a large group of youths all decked out in shiny, jingling colonial uniforms (to me the males looked like samurai warriors). After a few Pilsen Trujillos we looked around and realized that most of the town had trickled into the general area of the soccer court. Finally, my buddy Ryan, the local rep for the team and our unofficial captain, was asked to get up and give a speech. Wisely, he kept it short and to the point, thanking the town for their hospitality and support. It was a good speech for a not-so-sober gringo. Some time after that, it came to our attention that the host mothers in the neighborhood had gotten together and bought these awesome jerseys for our whole team. This was an incredibly generous gesture on their part, and the jerseys are really nice: white w/ a red diagonal stripe like the Peru national team jerseys, with a “Tres de Octubre” emblem in the corner. Classy.
Speaking of the Peruvian national team, World Cup qualifying started I’m not sure when, but I do know that Peru is somewhere near the bottom of the South America bracket. The top five teams will advance to the mundial, and right now Paraguay is leading with close to twenty points. Argentina and Brazil are also good, as usual. Peru has something like eight points, and the other day I heard was ahead of only Bolivia. Until they played Bolivia today and lost 3-0 in a rout. Peru looked terrible. But it was fun to get some beers and a lunch of, yep, chicken and papas, while watching the game in a bar with a bunch of other fans. Almost like a fall Saturday back home.
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