Feasting on giant condoms while having a jam session? :-/ eek. Better read on for clarification.
Since I skipped writing about Thanksgiving, EIST (Early In-Service Training), and the past couple weeks, I’ll fill you all in on those in this post.
Let’s start with Thanksgiving- my very first Thanksgiving away from my family. Thanks to the beach and lots of other Volunteers, I survived. I was able to Skype with most of my family for a while on Thursday, and it was great to hear everyone’s voices. If I closed my eyes it almost felt as though I was there with them, just listening to the beloved sounds of Family Fest. I managed to make it through the Skype session without crying, but it left a strange taste in my mouth. It was weird to be so far away, yet so great to be able to talk to everyone. I don’t know, I guess I can’t explain how I felt afterwards. It just reminded me how incredibly lucky I am to be a part of my family.
So, Kelsey, what did you do for Thanksgiving since you weren’t chowin’ down on turkey and pumpkin pie? Well, let me just tell you. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I headed into Piura with some other Volunteers, where we hung out all day until our 11:45pm overnight bus to Trujillo. Trujillo is the capital city of the department of La Libertad, located 2 departments south of Piura. We arrived in Trujillo at 6:00am and headed straight to the hostel where we met about 30 other Volunteers. You can imagine how the scene played out since most of us hadn’t seen each other in 3 months. Tears were shed, hugs were given, laughs were laughed, stories were shared, and more hugs were given. Everyone was so excited to see each other that it helped ease the pain of being away from home on Thanksgiving. Thursday was spent in Trujillo, doing whatever we wanted. Some went to the mall, some went on a tourist excursion, some ate all the fast food they could get their hands on, and others just chilled at the hostel all day. I ran around all day, flitting from group to group, trying to spend as much time with everyone as I could! The night ended with an obligatory trip to a local club that had never before seen so many gringos in one night.
Friday we checked out of the hostel and headed to a beach town about a 20-minute cab ride away called Huanchaco. We checked in to another hostel that was incredible. There was a side for camping, a side for dorms (where we stayed), a restaurant, a kitchen on the camping side, and it was literally right across the street from the beach. We could walk out the front door of the hostel and be on the beach in less than 30 seconds- amazing. I laid on the beach with tons of other Volunteers basically all day Friday. We tried to get in the water but there were so many rocks that it was incredibly painful on our feet, and they were all failed attempts. Huanchaco is a fairly touristy town so they’re used to seeing tons of gringos everywhere; and not just Americans, but people from all over the world. I had visited Huanchaco during FBT so I was kind of familiar with the town. The one thing I remembered most was this brilliant little vegetarian restaurant that had delicious food. To put into perspective how wonderful the food is, I’ll tell you that I didn’t eat anywhere else the entire time we were in Huanchaco!
Saturday was basically a repeat of Friday until the late afternoon. Saturday had already been dubbed as our day for unofficial Thanksgiving celebrations. A group of Volunteers headed into town to buy the supplies for our feast while the rest of us anxiously awaited their return. When they finally got back to the hostel they were in need of some serious help with all of the preparations. More than enough people volunteered. From the moment the food arrived to the moment we finished eating, we took over the hostel. The staff was kind enough to let us use the kitchen in their restaurant between lunch and dinner, from 4:00-6:00pm, as well as the kitchen on the camping side. They also provided us with all the equipment we needed to create the feast, from knives, to pots and pans, to cutting boards. I wish you all could have seen the process of preparing this meal. We had people washing vegetables in one of the showers; people were cutting vegetables, fruit, and occasionally their fingers at the station on the deck; a group of people peeled and cooked potatoes in the camping kitchen; others prepared green bean casserole, stuffing, and sweet potato casserole in the other kitchen. As unorganized as it all was, we somehow managed to get everything done. We may not have been a well-oiled machine, but I was impressed with our efficiency. After hours of work and anticipation, the feast was finally ready! The 25 or so of us all gathered around to look at the buffet, and not a single one of us could hide our huge smiles! After basking in the glory of what lay before us, we all grabbed our plates and proceeded to pile them high with delicious food. We sat at a long table comprised of all of the night-stands and chairs in all of our rooms and enjoyed our very own Thanksgiving meal. Looking up and down the table, watching all of my new dear friends eat and enjoy each others’ company, hearing the laughter and conversation that floated along- I felt like I was at home. It wasn’t the home that I’ve known my entire life, but a new kind of home. The people that were mere strangers just 5 months earlier were now my family. We were all in the same situation, missing home and feeling sad, yet we somehow managed to create this amazing feast and enjoy our time together. We made our own kind of Thanksgiving. I kept thinking about how lucky I’ve been my entire life to have my friends and family at home, and the luck that I just obtained by meeting this new group of people, this new family. That was my happiest moment in all of my time in Peru.
We might not have enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving feast, but I’d say we gave it a run for its money with our spread:
· 6 rotisserie chickens (substituted for the turkey because apparently turkey costs a small fortune in Peru)
· Roasted veggies of all sorts
· Loads of bread
· A giant, cheesy, delicious mac’n’cheese bake
· Vegan green bean cass
· Stuffing (this might actually rival Claire’s stuffing, it was that good)
· Cheesy sweet potato cass (I’ve never liked sweet potato casserole, but this one made me weak in the knees)
· Tons of fresh salad (that obviously got ignored because of all of the other delicious food)
· Garlic mashed potatoes
· Cheesy garlic mashed potatoes
· Cheesy, garlic, bacon mashed potatoes
· Fruit salad (beautifully presented in a watermelon shell)
· Apple crisp (I’m convinced this could win a blue ribbon in any county fair)
· No-bake cookies (instead of forming them into cookies they were served in a pan as one giant glob of deliciousness)
· 4 kinds of ice cream
· Fruit punch (made with real fruit juice)
· Sweet Peruvian wine (that never tastes good, but we had to have it anyway)
If you can’t tell from the list above, we had copious amounts of food. So much food, in fact, that we had to give it away to the staff at the hostel and any other random groups of people we could find in the hostel. Everything was so delicious that I never wanted to stop eating, and I felt satisfyingly like I had just eaten a real Thanksgiving feast back in Kansas.
After our feast and clean-up we acted like true Youth Development Volunteers and had a sing-along/jam session. The guitar, cajon (wooden box with a hole cut out of it- basically a cool drum), different raps and songs were all present at the jam session. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful Thanksgiving.
The next day, Sunday, all of us Youthies packed up our belongings and headed to Chiclayo in the department of Lambayeque for EIST. We spent the week in a Volunteer’s site called Olmos, located about 2 hours from Chiclayo. The week was full of sessions, presentations, and different project ideas that we could all potentially carry out at site. To me, the most interesting sessions were on youth entrepreneurship and an Escuela de Padres (School for Parents). Since I am a business major, obviously the youth entrepreneurship idea caught my attention. My site has a need for this because there are very limited job opportunities for the youth once the graduate high school. I’m hoping to plan and organize a program in which they can make their own money, and in turn learn about finances, the value of money, and other business opportunities they have. I’m also incredibly interested in creating an Escuela de Padres in my community. I could cover a million different topics in this, and I suppose that over the 2 years I might cover almost that many, but my main goal is to try to organize a community bank. Most Peruvians that live in small sites, and even those that live in the cities, don’t have enough money to send their children to college, and therefore the kids are forced to either stay at home or find a low-paying job. The idea of a community bank is to create a group of parents for each grade and have them each put 10 soles into this community bank every month. Once they have enough money, they will be able to give out loans and make money on the interest, therefore creating more profit. Ideally I’d like the parent groups to start saving when their children are in the 1st grade. That way, when their child graduates from high school, the parents can go to their community bank, split the money equally, and uses that money to send their kids to college. This obviously isn’t going to pay for all 4 years at a university, but it will cover at least the first year, and the kids will be able to get a part-time job to help pay for the rest. I know this project is going to take a lot of planning and work, but I’m very passionate about it and I think it could be one of the most sustainable projects that I could do in my community. Obviously I still have a lot of work to do before I can even present this plan to my community, but I really hope that it works out!
Since World AIDS Day fell during EIST, we were able to participate in the efforts of the community in which we were staying. My group created a socio drama for the youth of Olmos, in which we had a giant singing condom that taught the youth about the ABC’s of prevention (A- abstinencia (abstinence) B- brindar fidelidad (be faithful) C-condon (correct use of condoms)). Zack, one of the most talented people I know, wrote a catchy jingle about the three methods that we sang between each of 3 different scenes in our play. Each scene depicted one of the ABC’s. It was a hilarious little socio drama and the kids loved it. By the end of it they were all singing along with us- it really was a glorious sight.
EIST ended, and after a week-and-a-half out of site, I finally returned to my quaint little town of El Arenal. It was hard to come back after being gone for so long and having so much “gringo time” with all of my new friends, but I eventually got back into the swing of things. School ends Friday, December 16th (tomorrow) for the year, so I’ve started planning different things to do over the break. Hopefully I’ll be working with Kyle and Brielle (my site neighbors) on different projects throughout the upcoming months. We all have some great ideas, it’s just a matter of getting them going. Wish us luck!
Well, Christmas is only 10 days away, and I can already tell that it’s going to be a rough holiday for me. I thought Thanksgiving would be worse, but I think Christmas is going to take the cake. It’s hard to feel like it’s Christmas when it’s a zillion degrees outside, I have to put sunscreen on to leave my room, and there’s not a real Christmas tree in sight. I will be celebrating Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my host family, but then I’m jetting out of here to Piura so I can Skype my family. Kyle and I are planning on meeting up and drowning our sorrows in as many snacks as we can find. I’ll head back to site on the 26th, stay for a few days and (hopefully) get things ready for summer vacation, and head out to the beach for New Year’s Eve with a bunch of other Volunteers. We’re heading to one of the most well-known and beautiful beaches of Piura, located about 3 or 4 hours north of me. This oasis is called Mancora. I’ve been lead to believe that it is swarming with gringos around NYE and that a good time will be had by all. I can hardly wait! It gives me something to look forward to and keep my mind off of Christmas (at least a little bit).
That’s all I have for now. I’ll be sure and update you all on Christmas and NYE as soon as they’ve passed. Thanks for the holiday packages, letters, prayers, and thoughts. I miss you guys SO incredibly much and think of you every single day. Love to all of you.
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