Happy Birthday!

January  18, 2011

2011

The first Birthday we all celebrated this year was, well, the New Year. I decided that I had had enough rain and headed to the beach to ring in the New Year with some volunteer friends. It’s amazing how much the weather changed during a 5 hr bus ride.  Peru has quite a few fun traditions when it comes to the New Year.

1.      1. Wear yellow underwear to bring luck. They were selling yellow underwear on every street so naturally I bought a pair. Apparently they subscribe to the one size fits all theory and when I pointed out to various venders that my butt would definitely not fit into their underwear they kindly showed me how stretchy the underwear is. “No hay un problema” and pointed to the underwear they managed to stretch over a hula hoop. (Our P.C. Medical officer reminded us that wearing a pair of underwear long enough that they turn yellow does not count)

2.      2. 12 grapes and 12 wishes at midnight. We opted for the non-Peruvian seedless kind to prevent choking as we shoved 12 grapes into our mouth.

3.      3. Burning of the Dolls. It sounds like a B-list horror movie from the 80’s but actually the tradition is to use your clothes to make a doll, fill it with your wishes for the New Year and then burn the sucker at midnight. A friend of mine had to convince her host dad no to burn her clothes while she was gone.

4.     3.  suitcase races. Ok, not exactly races but the idea is to run around with your suitcase at midnight to bring travel in the New Year.

Peace Corps

Peace Corps has hit the “over the hill” mark and is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year! March 1^st is the day the Peace Corps was officially created. It’s an exciting time to be serving and serving in one of the original Peace Corps countries. In Peru we’re having quite a shindig at the Embassy in Lima as well as the Presidential Palace. For those of us who are not quite important enough to hob nob with the president of Peru each region will be hosting their own celebration in the capital cities.

Manchu Picchu (Sort of)

It’s been 100 years since a little farm boy led Hiram Bigham to “re-discover” the ruins of Machu Picchu. The Peruvian government has invited the family of Hiram Bigham back to Peru to celebrate the anniversary. Apparently, they’ve gotten over Bigham taking many of the relics found there to the US and refusing to give them back to Peru. Glad there’s no hard feelings.

In other news the local government has just changed over following October’s election and I couldn’t be happier. The previous municipality was less than enthusiastic about our presence here and was much more concerned about new roads than anything education or social service wise. Luckily this new alcalde has put education as a major priority and is enthusiastically supporting pretty much anything we want to do. His brother-in-law is actually a former Peace Corps Volunteer (small world) and he really believes in the work we do. On top of that the new person in charge of education looks like she’ll be a great counterpart. We’ve already discussed project ideas and our ideas mesh perfectly. She told me she has had ideas for a long time but nobody to support and help her so she’s really excited to work with me. We are doing an Academia this break and hopefully it works well enough that it becomes an annual thing. Academias are kind of like summer schools/college prep that take place during the vacation months. These places are very expensive and usually only offered in larger cities so having one here (at very small cost) provides this educational opportunity to many more students. The new librarian is also great and really eager to work on the library with my site mate and I. The library has already been moved to a much better local and it appears I’ll be helping the librarian catalogue and organize the books we have so we can create a list of books to solicit from NGOs.

January signifies the start of not only the rainy season but also Carnival season! Cajamarca is the capital of Carnival in Peru and in the weeks leading up to actually Carnival week (the week before/of the start of lent) is Carnival season. Carnival season though means one thing: water balloons. I now walk through Cajamarca City anxious and on high alert scanning the streets for children….children armed with water balloons. It is fair game for kids to nail anyone and everyone walking around with water balloons. Balconies are common on buildings here and are favorite spot for the little ninjas. I’ll give you one guess who their favorite target is. Unsuspecting gringos. According to my host mom the 20^th is the actually date that hunting season starts so looks like I’m going to have to start watching my back here too.