more maps

Last year I painted the world map with a bunch of kids in my site. This year I decided to change it up a little bit and paint a map of Peru in the primary school. I had the kids draw the map of Peru using the grid method, but then I had the good luck of finding someone who had a rented projector in my town. Since this was the only time I've ever found a projector in my site, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and used the projector to draw maps of Cajamarca, San Miguel, and Cochán. Ideally, Peru would have been the first map, but since I had already drawn it, I wasn't able to change the order. Peru is broken down into departments (Cajamarca), and then in Cajamarca there are provinces (San Miguel), and each province has districts (Cochán). Furthermore, each district consists of various caserios. So in the end, I ended up with 4 maps along the entranceway. While the world map was cool, I think the kids were way more interested in these maps, because it consisted of places they actually knew. It was very cute watching all the 6 year-olds trying to sound out the names, and then running their hands all over the map of Cochán to show everyone what caserio they lived in. The only problem with it being in the primary school was that the 10 and 11 year olds that I recruited to paint aren't that careful, and I was constantly having to stand guard during recess to make sure the kids didn't run their dirty hands all over the wet paint. Below are a few pictures of the painting process, and the finished project more or less. It's still missing a few finishing touches such as labels for each map, but I think you'll get the idea.

In order: Cajamarca, Peru, San Miguel, and Cochán

Basura!!

One of the most frustrating things about living here is the trash situation. While there are a few garbage cans in town, most people just burn their trash, or throw it on the street, grass, or whoever they are. Whenever I go on a hike, the kids want to leave the trash in the middle of nowhere, and I have to convince them to put it in a bag and carry it back to Cochán. Even in Cochán, they have people that sweep the streets, but they just dump all the trash into the stream that runs through town. The garbage cans are taken around the corner and dumped in plain site. There isn't any kind of hole or garbage dump. Anyway, the doctor in my site had a friend from Cajamarca that works with waste and decided to come to Cochán to raise awareness of the trash situation. When I heard about this, I jumped at the opportunity to help, because this is one of the things that bothers me the most. We decided to have the 4th and 5th grade of the colegio participate in a clean up of the river that runs through town. There were incentives such as prizes for the group that gathered the most trash, and they were taught how to separate organics from inorganic. Apparently the doctor tried to clean up the river with kids from the primary school the year before, but the parents were outraged and put out a denuncia. We figured that by working with the older kids there wouldn't be a problem, but there is always a problem. Even though we had the permission of the director, the day of, the same father who had a problem in the escuela, and happens to be the head of the parent committee, decided that it was hazardous and the children would not participate. Luckily, there was some negotiating, and they made the event optional. We ended up with 39 kids out of the 65, which ended up being perfect because there were only 40 t-shirts.

I had seen the trash from the river, but I never realized how disgusting it was. You would be amazed at what was found in there. Even though we were cleaning the river, people around still had a negative attitude. They told me, there's no point in doing that because people are just going to continue to dump things in there. They don't realize that while you can't expect a change overnight, hopefully little by little you are able to reach a few people and make a difference. People don't think it's a problem to dump things in the stream because once rainy season comes the water level rises and washes it all "away." Out of sight, out of mind apparently. While I've been doing my part to ingrain the importance of not littering on the kids, it would really be nice to do a whole campaign. Unfortunately I have little time left, and this problem is bigger than me. There is no support from the authorities in town, and no progress has been made to build a landfill. Once we had all the trashbags of trash, there was nowhere to put them and we were forced to put them around the corner, where all the other trash is thrown.

At first they weren't so eager to dig in.

Getting dirty

They found a mattress in the river.

The crowd that gathered to watch from the street (the middle of town). Apparently watching people pick up trash is interesting.

This group of 4 girls won, picking up 25 bags of trash!

Picking up trash is fun!

Lots of trash


After the clean up with their new t-shirts.

Hiking and more hiking

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave here, is all the hiking that I've been able to do. There isn't much to do in town, and even less to do in my room, so I try to get out and see as much of the mountains that I can. While the little kids are adorable, I am lucky to also be friends with many of the older kids, thus I always have hiking partners. It's getting to the point where I've seen more of Cochán than most people in my town, and I've seen several tourist spots more than once. Condác is a waterfall that is about an hour and a half to two hour walk away. Most people in my town have never been but are always talking about going. I'd actually been twice before, but I offered to go again since a lot of people wanted to go. It also helps that I have a camera, thus I am always invited on these little outings. Kim, a volunteer in the nearby provincial capital of San Miguel, mentioned that she likes to hike, but there aren't that many places to go hiking in San Miguel. Now that there is relatively easy transport between our sites, I asked her if she wanted to come to Cochán for the day and go on a hike. She came over on the early combi, helped make empanadas and we were ready to go, or so we thought. The little group of 8 or so that I had planned to come somehow grew to 17 people. It was a very random group, but it was still a nice hike, and it didn't rain too much. There was very little water compared to when I went before, but this enabled us to cross the river and actually enter where the water fell. Crossing the river was still scary and on the way back when I jumped from rock to rock, my precious metal water bottle fell out and sunk to the bottom of the river. It was very sad, but luckily I still had my camelbak to hold me over.

The next weekend we planned to go on another hike, to some ventanillas in the neighboring district of Tumbaden. I had seen these ventanillas from across the mountain, but i had never actually been there. This was going to be a long hike, so many of the kids's parents wouldn't let them go. We ended up with a good group of 7, but two of the kids went on ahead. They were supposed to wait up for us on the road, but just as I called them my credit on my phone ran out. We were already out of town so there was no way for me to get credit. There was only about a minute of credit between the other four people I was with. One of the girls that went on ahead actually knew the route, and I was the only other person that had any idea where these ventanillas were because I had seen them from a distance. Well, we tried calling but Peruvians tend to be vague about where they are. I ask her where she was, and she told me was "por abajo" which basically means down there. We ended up going another route because one of the kids I was with thought that was the way, and we realized it wasn't when we called the girl again. This time she said she was at the bridge, which isn't very helpful considering there are a million bridges. She then clarified what bridge, and we realized that we were still an hour away from there because of our little detour. We told them to wait for us but we failed to mention that we didn't know the way. When we finally reached the bridge, they were nowhere to be seen. We used the last of the credit to call her, only to find out that she was already up the mountain at the ventanillas. We asked her where the path was and she responded "por alli por alli" which means over there, over there, before our credit ran out for good. I knew the general direction of the ventanillas, but since we couldn't find the path, we spent the next hour climbing and crawling up 1,000 feet in an effort to get up the mountain. All in all, we spent over 4 hours walking, in what should have been a 2 1/2 hour hike. Once we were there, we eventually met up with the two kids that went ahead and enjoyed the ventanillas. I had been to the ventanillas in Cochán, but these were much cooler. After some picture taking and lunch, we walking another 30 minutes to the pueblo of Tumbaden. It started to rain so we took shelter in this little veranda like structure on the plaza. All was good until the town drunk that had been sitting below decided to climb up the stairs and enter our little party. He stumbled up there and took a seat next to us with his belt in his hand. He looked at us and kept whipping his belt around. One of the local kids told us to be careful because he hits, so we gave him an empanada to keep him busy and got out of there as fast as we could. When we were in Tumbaden, we ran into 3 other girls from Cochán, and we all met up and decided to walk back together. We had a 3 hour hike ahead of us, and it was getting late and starting to rain. This time the hike was easier because we actually found the path, and we got back into Cochán just as it was getting dark.

Oooh - Ahhhh

Kim and I, entering the frigid water.

The group in front of the waterfall.

I present the ventanillas of Tumbaden

Lots of ventanillas.

There are some pretty cool and very random ventanillas.

On top of the ventanillas in a Tinaja. See those hills behind me? We had to go down the mountain, up the next one, back down, and up again.

We reached our final destination, Tumbaden, a district capital even smaller than Cochán in the neighboring province of San Pablo.

Music Videos

I recently purchased a small camcorder to capture some of my last few months on film. The girls in my site had fun with the camcorder, and one weekend we spent the whole day filming different "shoots" for their music video in and around Cochán. I was supposed to edit the video some more but I got lazy. So here is "Amiga" by La Factoria, starring Karla, Paola, Susan, and Cori.

Argentina

So this is a way overdue post. I mostly blame it on my internet being crappy and not letting me upload pics. A few weeks ago I went on a vacation with my friend Melissa to Argentina. Because I extended for a few more months, I had just enough vacation saved up for this little trip. This was definitely a splurge vacation, and one of the few vacations that I have taken that haven't involved seeing family. We only were in Argentina for 11 days but I think we were able to see alot of the country. First stop was El Calafate, which is way down south where we were able to see one of the few growing glaciers in the world. It was pretty cool to be able to walk on the ice. The one thing that I didn't really realize before this trip was how far south Argentina was. We went at the end of their winter, and since I've been in Peru for the past 2 years, I forgot what real cold felt like. It was very refreshing to feel that cold crisp air of winter. After going to the glaciers we hopped on a flight to Puerto Madryn where we were able to see what the coastal part of Patagonia has to offer. We went whale watching and luckily we weren't disappointed. I had never been whale watching before so I wasn't that excited before. However, we lucked out with sunny skies, and tons of whales really close to shore. We also went to go see the sea elephant colonies. Unfortunately there weren't too many yet because the season had just begun. They are very lazy and just lay there in the sand.

After spending a few days in Patagonia it was back to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a very modern city and it reminded me much more of Europe than of South America. The people there are all very tall and pale, especially in comparison to Peru and Ecuador. We actually were able to spend a fair amount of time in Buenos Aires, most of it which was spent on a mission to taste as many different ice cream shops as possible. No one told me before, bt Buenos Aires has incredible ice cream. It is more like the Italian gelato because of all the Italian immigrants. Some people might think that Argentinian food is bland, but for me it was perfect. There was sooo much pasta and gnocchi, great steak, and amazing empanadas. It's a good thing I was only there for a short time!

We were also able to make it up to Iguazu falls which is in the northern part of the country. Unforunately we had cloudy weather for this part of the trip, but the falls were still pretty impressive. We visited both the Brazilian and the Argentinian sides of the falls. When we went to the Brazilian side, I was a little nervous because I was going to use my Ecuadorian passport for the first time. I was so nervous that I was an idiot and left my US passport in the hotel room. The border was only a few minutes drive away, but once we got to the border, we encountered someone on a power trip who detained me because I was illegally in Argentina according to my Ecuadorian passport. Melissa had to go back to the hotel to get my other passport, while I waited at the border. When we crossed into the Brazilian side, I was worried they were going to say something because it's kind of odd giving someone a brand new blank passport. I mean, how did I get to Brazil, if I had no stamps. But they stamped me in no problem, and I didn't have to get the visa to enter Brazil.

The Brazilian side of the falls is cool because you are able to see a panoramic view. It was a little weird because they spoke Portuguese. I'm awful at languages, and I get really confused when I go somewhere where I don't understand the language. On the way back there was a little confusion with out taxi driver who tried to overcharge us a ridiculous amount for when he went back to get my passport. He was half an hour late picking us up though, so I was firm and refused to give in. He decided to haunt us the rest of our stay at Iguazu though, up until we got in the shuttle to leave for the airport. When we went to the Argentina side of the falls, we could really sense just how powerful those falls were. The water level was high so the water was brown, so again, pictures really don't do it justice.

After getting back from Iguazu, we spent a few more days bumming around Buenos Aires. We did take a little day trip into Uruguay, to visit the quaint little town of Colonia. It was a nice little day trip, but let's be honest, we really just went there to say we've been to Uruguay.

So, there's my trip in a nutshell. Hopefully this won't be the last of my travels, but it will be the last until I finish my service in December.

Iguazu Falls

La Boca in Buenos Aires

Practicing my jumping skills in Patagonia

Walking on el Perito Moreno glacier

Lots of ice, yum!

Sea elephants are cute!

Male sea elephants, not so much!

Lucky shot of a whale jumping.

Awkward Huayno Videos

A few months ago, the engineer that comes and hooks up the internet in my site came by with the huayno singer, El Gallito de Oro, who resides in the nearby provincial capital of San Miguel. This huayno singer, who happens to be a teacher in his spare time (if you've read anything I've written about education here, you'd understand that I'm being completely literal), came to Cochán to film part of his 3rd music DVD. Anyway, they came up to me and asked me if I could help them with the filming of the video. I assumed it was some kind of technical help, but I couldn't understand why. Little did I know, they actually wanted me to be IN the video. Well, I wasn't prepared at all and told them that unfortunately I couldn't dance. I don't like dancing, although I've learned to get by here stomping my feet around and calling that huayno. However, there was no way I was going to have my terrible dancing documented on a DVD that would be sold on the streets in Cajamarca. I thought I was able to get out of the video when I told them I couldn't dance, but they said, that's ok, you can just stand there. So we went out into the grass field and filmed two videos. In the first video he gave this rose and told me to stand there while the huayno singer serenaded me and danced around me. He told me to bop my head up and down to the music, which is something I found challenging because I have no rhythm. He also told me to smile at the camera. To make this even more awkward, a crowd of people from my town who were around decided to come watch me make a fool out of myself. There are no dress rehearsals in these huayno videos, and it was improvisation. Once the first video was done, I thought I was good to go. Unfortunately they wanted to film another song. This time I sat on an 3 wheeled ATV while the huayno singer once again serenaded me and danced around me. Once again, I was told to sway back and forth and move the handle bars and bop my head, while smiling at the camera. Anyway, I think this description is good enough. To capture the true awkwardness of this whole event, I've uploaded a link to one of the videos below. The DVD is currently wrapping up production, but given that I'm a star, I was given a sneak preview. For all those that are interested, the video should be for sale by September 15th, just in time for the San Miguel fiestas. (hey I'm just passing la voz.)

Ancash

Ancash. I've been meaning to go there for a while, so this year I decided to spend Fiestas Patrias there instead of staying in site for my town's fiestas. My trip down involved two overnight buses and spending the day in Trujillo. I met up with a few other volunteers and we saw the ruins of Chan-Chan. I'm not a big ruins person but I figured that if I had a day to kill, I should see something. These ruins are pre-incan and made out of adobe so the rain washes them away. Nevertheless they were pretty cool. After doing our cultural activity for the day, we mall hopped between 2 malls and had starbucks and McDonald's. Trujillo is almost like Lima. After that was the highlight of my day. I was able to see Harry Potter 6 in English with spanish subtitles. In Cajamarca they were only playing it in Spanish so I wanted to wait to see it in English. It would be been fine in Spanish, but it's WAY better to watch it in English. After that it was an overnight bus ride to Huaraz where Arianna met me in the bus station. I didn't really have any plans for Ancash, except to eat good food and go on a hike to see this glacier lake that I had seen pictures of. There were a lot of Volunteers in Ancash, but I was the only one from my group because almost everyone is COS-ing in the next few weeks. The cool thing about Huaraz is that it is a trekking mecca. Right now it's the high season so there are a ton of tourists coming through to go on treks, climb some mountains, etc. As a result there are a lot of great restaurants that cater to tourists. This includes two coffee shops that have wireless internet and serve American Breakfasts all day. This could have easily been the highlight of my trip, and I definitely probably spent half my time just hanging out in the coffee shops trying to order as much food as possible. They had real Belgian waffles, french toast, pancakes, and bagels. I haven't really even been able to find these foods in Lima! When I wasn't sitting around stuffing my face, I was able to get out and see a little of Ancash. I stayed in Ari's site, which is located 11km outside the city. One day a big group of Volunteers went and saw Pastorouri, which is this rapidly receding glacier. It's normally closed but they opened it up for Fiestas Patrias. Several people had trouble with the walk, and for once I appreciated living at 10,000 feet because I didn't have to acclimitize. The next day we convinced two other volunteers to go on a hike with us to Laguna 69. This is a day trek located several hours walking from the popular Llaganucho. I had seen pictures of this laguna and it was really the only thing I wanted to do in Ancash. The hike was a few hours, but it really wasn't that bad. I think it's because I'm used to hiking with kids in my site who run ahead and like to go on trails that don't exist. Compared to that, it was a cake-walk. The walk was definitely worth it and at the top we reached this laguna that was so blue it looked like they dyed it. It reminded me of cool-aid or blue raspberry flavor. Once I was able to get out of Huaraz, I was really able to appreciate the beauty of Ancash. There was snow-capped mountains everywhere, and we were able to get pretty close to them.

Chan chan ruins

Some special kind of gigantic plant that only grows up there. Puya raimondi or something like that.

SNOW!!

The rapidly receding glacier

The first glacial lake

The beginning of the hike

On the way up.

The water looks like it is dyed. It reminds me of the stuff you put in your toilet, that or a blue raspberry otter pop!!

So excited to arrive at Laguna 69!!!

This was the one of the only signs marking the trail.

Another lake, on the way up to Laguna 69