Allaapa Quechua (A lot of Quechua)

Hi! Let’s see, on Sunday I got back from a week long hiatus from the wonderful world of San Marcos. I went to Huaraz and met up with all of the other volunteers from Peru 8 and we had four days of Quechua instruction. We met up at a random house up a hill and there was one professor from Callejón de Huaylas and one from Callejón de Conchucos. It turns out that there are a lot of differences between the two valleys and when the professor from Huaylas was teaching, I was usually pretty confused. Now I have almost forty pages of vocabulary to learn before our next week of class in three weeks. Oh my goodness.
Highlights of trip:
-- Loosing a significant amount of Spanish as I hung out with English speakers all week.
-- Meeting with eight other volunteers from Ancash and talking about the leadership camp ALMA (that stands for something). It was interesting to see the dynamics of everyone who had already been here for a year or more. Also, it was interesting to realize that I live really far away from everyone and don’t know these people very well . . .yet.
-- I got packages! My super cool friend Betsey sent me a package!! Yay! Thank you thank you thank you!!! I also got packages from the padres with spices (!!!!) so I can cook things for my family that taste how I think they are going to taste! Books from the peace corps so I can increase my charla-ing capacity. AND, a package all the way from Africa! Combine that with a Christmas package for my host family from the volunteer that I replaced and you have a serious packing problem on the return trip.
-- I bough some presents for my host family including plums (here they are tiny and vary from purple to red, but this doesn’t seem to have an effect on their flavor), grapes (seedless? what is that?), pears (the tiniest pears I have ever seen), antibacterial soap (what am I trying to promote here?), lentils and split peas (Marta brought meat, as they keep telling me, I didn’t want to so I brought another source of protein… I have a feeling they are not so appreciative of this substitution.) And some other stuff that I forget… :)
-- Libby, another volunteer got typhoid fever, so that was the main sickness of the week. We already got a vaccine for this, so we aren’t sure how that happened but she is on antibiotics and the head swelling has gone down. It was pretty scary but things are one the up and up. Yay Peace Corps medical care!
-- We saw movies! Five soles a pop. (I thought it was really expensive for here but in the states, that equates to about $1.70.) And it’s at a restaurant type place so you can order food at the same time. We saw “The summer of Kil..j..ro..” (um, it was a Japanese name and I don’t remember how it was spelled or pronounced), “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Madeinusa”. I would recommend that anyone who is a little worried about me being in the sierra of Peru not to watch Madeinusa. Or at least to talk (slash write) to me afterwards.
-- We made friends with the owner of the best bakery in Huaraz. His name is Edgar and he’s amazing and sometimes we get free pastries and get to hear amazing stories about the history of Peruvian dishes.
-- Our bus trip back to San Marcos took six hours… (it’s supposed to take “three hours”) the trip to Huaraz from San Marcos took four hours. Anyway, it turns out that when you don’t pay the bus driver, he doesn’t show up. (Crazy stuff.) So our eight o’clock bus left at ten (when someone finally convinced the driver, I’m guessing). Oh, on the way there, we sat up with the driver, not with the passengers. Then, because this was not allowed, to pass the police station, we had to get out and load into a combi that took us to the bus station. The first policeman that came aboard to check out the situation was paid off. And the drivers told them that Tsutsuy and I worked for the bus company. In my defense, I did not know this was not allowed until three hours into the bus ride (we had real seats and everything so, not my fault!)