Um, summary of the last two weeks...

Helloooo!
Well, I’ve been absent from any postings for a while. I posted two the other day but I think I put the dates wrong and therefore they are probably lost in the blog sprawl that I’ve created. Ooops… I shall try to reconcile this discrepancy momentarily. I’m in Huaraz! Woohoo! We are officially in the second week of Quechua classes and someday I hope to be able to speak this crazy language but I’m 90% sure that it will not happen this week. Quechua varies so much from region to region that it’s impossible to figure out what they say in San Marcos without being in San Marcos. Although, on that same train of thought, I usually can’t figure it out in San Marcos either. Bah…
So, true to what I thought, carnival is a bigger celebration in Huaraz that in little ol’ S. M. However, it is most likely miniscule in comparison to what is going on in Cajamarca, another department of Perú (marca means village in Quechua, fyi…caja means box in Spanish… so, um, perhaps cajamarca means box village? That would be way funny.)
Ok, I’m now going to go through a very unsystematic recap of the last couple of week’s events. I started English classes! I was not very enthusiastic about this whole summer school thing that everyone else (as in all other volunteers) seemed quite into. I was talking to the director of the high school and he said that I could help out a professor that was possibly coming in but that did not pan out. Then I met this girl in S.M. that speaks English really well and knows how to teach English! She wanted to teach a class and wanted something to do so with the pretext of facilitation (aka – she gets to teach the classes…) we put this plan into action. Turns out for a sol (about thirty cents) you can make a little paragraph and send it out over the radio three different times. I found out as the process continued that if you give it to the cool professor at the high school, it just goes out an indefinite number of times for free (I assume that the school paid for it…score.) Ok, so I now have a class of 45 kids (the actual kids vary every class… there are always new ones but since the whole thing is just going to last a month, I don’t really enforce any attendance rules) ranging from the ages of 4-16. Yes, everyone is learning an immense amount of information (ok, that was sarcastic. However, I can tell a difference in the kids that participate who also happen to be the kids that were there from the beginning… So progress is indeed being made.)
Some of my cute stories about English class are drawing different colored shapes on the basketball court, shouting out a color, and the kids have to find the color. Then we review the shape that I had drawn when we get there. They were actually really receptive and of course, liked the frantic running search to find the color first. Then, let’s see, we’ve done command words including run, skip, find, and I’ve witnessed some frenzied searches when I shout, “Find something …. green!” which is way cute. And they are learning the quintessential greeting of “What’s up” and farewell of “See ya later” and the adults have progressed to “Whatcha doin’?”…which is super-important….
Oh, and just before I left, I had an interesting conversation with Señor Director of the high school. He had just gotten back from vacation and I had gotten rejected in early February from the Aldea Infantil from doing my world map. What is the world map? As a Peru 8 health volunteer, I am required to paint a mural somewhere in my community within the first three months of service (a.k.a. – I have one week)… of the world, Peru, or Ancash. This has a very obvious connection to my work as a community health volunteer so I’m not even going to insult your intelligence by explaining the correlation. Ok, so I’m chatting it up with the man and say,
-- “Hey! So, I was thinking of maybe painting a map of Peru in the high school…um…would that be ok?”
-- “You mean on paper?”
-- “No, on a wall, with paint.”
-- “Oh, well, shouldn’t we contract someone who knows about painting to do that?”
-- “Um, yes, but it will look really good. My friend in Huaripampa did one and it looks really good and I can take a picture of it and show you! And it will look really good; I promise!!”
-- “Oh, well, ok, I guess.”
Done and done. This was perhaps the most ridiculous I’ve felt all week (I feel ridiculous often in this country, otherwise I would have chosen a longer time span…) and definitely one of my more random moments. And if you know me, which you probably do because otherwise this is a very boring blog, I’m a very random person. Anyway, I hope this guy knows what he’s getting himself into cause I’m showing up the day I get back and painting a wall.
Alright, I’m learning some fun knitting patterns (ok, two.. but I’m going to learn more) and sidenote is that everyone within a 100 mile radius knows how to knit crazy fast and just knows patterns (and really complicated ones). Anyway, so funny story is that I was knitting with a friend in her store and then was walking back to my house when a young girl came rushing up to me, “You know how to knit?!?!”. I said, “Um, yes, sort of, simple things, and really slowly…”. “Can you teach me?” she asked. “Everyone in this town knows how to knit; you want me to teach you?” “Yes!”she says. So, I guess I’m going to teach a Peruvian how to knit. Never thought I’d say that. Weird.
What else… I finished my diagnostic of four of the communities around San Marcos. Doing this I’ve reached some almost breaking points in my Peace Corps experience which mostly has to do with women that I’m interviewing speaking absolutely no Spanish. All Quechua all the time and although “What do you plant?” I can do, “What are the common sicknesses / symptoms that the adults in your family have?” is a slightly different scenario. Anyway, I was just so frustrated with everything: no one understood me, I wasn’t getting good data, these poor women were getting frustrated, and on top of that I had been sent to this place knowingly with absolutely no language skills to communicate with these people who I’m supposed to be helping by listening to and discerning their needs. Riiiight. End of story, I got a total of 80 surveys completed and might even upload some results on the blog, which will probably lower my readership significantly, but I might do it anyway.
I played volleyball on the official health post team of San Marcos so that was really cool. I did not know about this until the day of which was sad times because I could have purchased a cool uniform from the CLAS of San Marcos. Sigh… Then I rolled my ankle and couldn’t really walk for two days.
I’ve gotten hit by many water balloons, some flour, and threatened by many more water balloons, buckets, and hoses during the wonder that is carnival. (Good news: it ends tomorrow! Bad news: the last day of carnival people get to throw whatever liquid they want, including oil, colored water, paint, etc.)
Ok, if you’ve made it this far in my babbling, congratulations! Email me the code: USHARGU743 and I’ll send you a prize!