Earth Day

Well, life has been pretty decent since vacation. I formed an official committee to manage long-term environmental projects, and our first order of business is to organize putting recycling bins in all the institutions in Vicco. I also held my 4th Recycling buy, once again alone. BUT I bought a good amount, and am now requiring that all cans and bottles are crushed or else I´ll pay less. I also got all my recycling put into my costales that I retreived from the Recycling guy in Cerro. Didn´t get to talk to him directly, since he was in Lima, but I´m hoping I´ll get around to having him come soon. I´m just so bad about calling people; I hate talking on the phone. Even more so when I know its going to be in Spanish and I can hardly hear the guy. So I´m hoping to see him here in Cerro again. I also have started teaching the chef and my host brother English at the restaurant while I sit around waiting for my food (or am serving the food, which I did a lot of this week). It´s nice teaching them in a more informal setting, 1 because theyre smart and interested, and 2 because its just plain fun without any stress for me.

On the personal life side of things, that´s been looking up too. For Earth Day (April 22nd) I went to the nearby Huayllay hot springs with my host brother (Jhonatan) and the restaurant chef (Efrain). We were mostly celebrating/relaxing Jon´s birthday which was the next day. The hot springs are pretty developed, being more a heated pool place. But it was so awesome swimming, being warm, and having a good time. We laughed a lot while Jon tried to swim (you have to remember that pools don´t exist in Vicco), and I demonstrated some Hapkido moves. They´re both really interested in learning some martial arts, so I think maybe I´ve finally found some people I´d be comfortable practicing with. Now if only I had a kicking or punching bag, need to get around to trying to make one. After that, we walked the 3 kilometers to the actual Bosque de Piedras of Huayllay (ie the massive protected area of cool rock formations). We wandered around in there for awhile, eating my chocolate chip cookies (thanks for the chocolate chips and walnuts, Mom) and bouldering. Bouldering is rock climbing, generally done without any gear and only very low to the ground. I managed to forget my sunscreen so now my face is incredibly burned. For the last two days, I´ve been trying to good naturedly laugh while my host mom while she laughs at me for how red my face is.

Jon´s birthday was very relaxed, but I did work. At the high school, we celebrated belatedly Earth Day. We did a clean-up with the whole school after they watched a really great video about Mother Earth. I even gave a charla about recycling and how to separate from trash, although most failed to actually do it during the trash pick-up. Efrain started feeling bad after our Huayllay trip, and I still don´t know whats wrong. He´s been sleeping a lot; I really hope he feels better soon. Especially with my host mom saying he has bronchitis, the silent, lethal kind. She insists that it sneaks up out of nowhere and is very dangerous. Cross your fingers my new closest friend in site doesn´t have bronchitis.

Anyways, that´s life in Peru. Excited to be doing stuff, and getting to travel again soon for more training events in May. I´ll post again when I have more to share.

Central Selva Vacation for Easter Week (Semana Santa)

I was so ready to have my first vacation in Peru. I returned from a long, exhausting trip to the desert of Lambayeque for a training event, emptied my bag of dirty clothes, and packed the last of my clean clothes to head off for vacation in the Central rain foreset. I was exhausted, but also ready to have fun on my own schedule. I met up with two fellow Environmental volunteers in Junin and from there we traveled together to Tarma. Tarma is the first hint of the rain forest to come, down the east side of the Andes. After a bit of a scare that we might not find a hotel room (from all the other people traveling for Semana Santa as well), we got a nice hotel and met up with two more Volunteers. I think at that point is when it set in I was on vacation, and we were winging it. It was awesome to be truthful. I think there is a mentality in the US of needing to have things planned. We like making to do lists and having our plans ready. But here in Peru, with a little bit of knowledge, you can do things much more off the radar. The next morning, we decided it was time to head further into the rain forest, and thought perhaps we'd take a car. So we went to the Stadium where vehicles left for La Merced, and as we arrived, a guy asked if we were heading to Merced. We said yes, and he beckoned us to the bus about to leave. We had thought we'd take a car, but here was a bus convienently about to leave for cheaper, so we said sure and got on. In La Merced, we got a car to Oxapampa, and enjoyed the scenic roads curving further and further away from civilization. Arriving to Oxapampa was a strange event. To understand why, you first need to know that Oxapampa was a German settlement in the 1860s. Peru gave the Germans some land, and the colonists spent two years hiking from Lima to their eventual settling place. "Everyone" knows that Oxapampa, and Pozuzo further up the road, still have people that speak German, have German dances, and look white. I've had many a people tell me you can find blonde, blue-eyed Peruvians in Oxapampa. So we rode into Oxapampa anxiously searching the faces of the people in the streets for a remnant of European ancestry. We were disappointed. Nobody jumped out at us and said guten tag. We asked around for a hotel room, finally settling on a place that charged us S/. 40 per person, which was more than we'd expected to have to pay. We settled in and started exploring, and finally saw the occasional white person. It was disconcerting. There weren't many, and so I would stare for long periods trying to figure out if they were really Peruvian or a tourist. Also, we saw our first wooden houses, and german shepards. It was then that it started to feel to me like we were somewhere other than Peru. Houses on the coast and in the mountains are typically made of concrete, mud bricks (adobe), or metal. Entire houses with wooden walls was not something I'd encountered in Peru. We ended up staying a day and a half in Oxapampa, during which we did a 14 kilometer hike into the nearby National Park. That was wonderful. I saw butterflies all over the place, and got to experience being in a rain forest again for the first time since Costa Rica. After meeting up with another Volunteer from my own year-group, we headed to Pozuzo. The woman at the terminal insisted she'd have the driver stop at the waterfalls along the way for us to take pictures free of charge. We weren't sure how that would turn out, since we were taking a van with other people. However, there ended up only being 3 others; two of which I talked to almost the entire 4 hour journey. The younger of the two had the lighter eyes showing his German ancestry which was cool, and he even counted in German for me. The other guy was a little too interested in me, although very nice. He invited us to the only discoteca in Pozuzo that night, and said if we couldn't find a hostal with empty rooms, he had space for us all (6 females...of course he had room). We did find a gorgeous hostal set back from the main street in Pozuzo, although the caretaker turned out to be a little crazy. We thought he might just not understand us well, but other people in Pozuzo told us he's just strange. Pozuzo turned out to be what we'd been waiting for. It was a quaint little town with two streets. The two streets run parellel to the river set between two mountains. There are wooden houses galor, and their main plaza has a ship in it along with a small grotto with water wheel. While walking around Pozuzo, we found a woman who still spoke German and made tourist goods, and a bar that actually made beer. To see those vat things of beer and have beer on tap was a strange experience. I tried a little, but I've never found a beer I like. The others told me it was really good, although not all that strong alcoholically. We did end up going to the discoteca that night, and I had the best time I've yet experienced at a club or bar in my life. That may sound dramatic, but then again, I have hardly any previous experience. When I realized the others were leaving, I extricated myself from dancing with the DJ and promised the bouncer we'd be in town tomorrow night. He ended up insisting the owner of the bar give us a ride home which was really nice since it was raining. Our last full day of vacation saw us just outside of Pozuzo swimming in natural pools in the river, and then hiking to see Cock on the Rocks. We had to pay an entrance fee for the private reserve, and a guide walked us in to see their lekking area. It was incredibly; I counted 8 that I could see at one time, and I would guess there was more like 13 or so by the calls. The Cock on the Rock male is bright orange with black and gray wings. We got to watch them calling out their dominance for at least half an hour not 10 meters away from us. We also saw traditional German dances and garb as part of their festivities for Semana Santa before going to swim. I ate sausages for the first time in Peru at dinner, and almost cried. I miss having access to good cuts of meat and sausages. Needless to say, Pozuzo is a wonderful place, and I hope to return. Perhaps for Octuberfest. I'll post the pictures on Facebook as soon as I can.

As a last thought, during the vacation, I tried to think of how I'd feel returning to site. I assumed I'd be depressed. But after this first full day of working back in site, I'm still feeling super psyched. Even while returning to Vicco from Cerro de Pasco yesterday, I was happy and chatting amiably with the people I shared transport with. I went around town today with my socia I took to training and we informed people of the meeting we want to hold to coordinate future projects. Everyone was willing, and people in the streets all greeted me by name. I guess that is something I missed during vacation, having people who knew me. Instead, everyone stared and talked which is the norm for tourists. The thing is...I don't consider myself a REAL tourist. I was during that vacation, but I kept wanting to tell everyone who stared that, no I was living and working in Peru, not just passing through.