There Are Mosquitoes In Iquitos (Christine's Favorite Jungle Rhyme)

Hola amigos!

Buenos dias from Peru! I have a lot to update you all on from our most recent adventures!his post can be divided into Jungle Adventures, and Volunteering- two super different but equally awesome parts of the last two weeks.

To start...Iquitos! Christine and I booked a flight to Iquitos so that we could spend 3 days there and see what the selva is all about. Peru is divided into costa, selva, and sierra- coast, jungle, and highlands- and all of these parts are incredibly different. It’s really amazing that one country contains so much diversity!

So we arrived in Iquitos and I immediately started to sweat buckets (how shocking). We found our hostel, The Flying Dog, which I would highly recommend to anyone traveling to Iquitos! The staff were awesome and the accommodations were super comfortable and cheap. We then started to explore Iquitos and were immediately accosted by SO many men trying to sell us jungle adventures. We were interested in finding out more and it seemed like just about everyone was a guide, knew a guide, had a brother who was a guide, and/or wanted to be our guide. We decided to embrace it and spent a couple of hours learning about the different packages being offered. In the process, we learned that there was an anaconda/animal rescue centre somewhere close by boat, and also about Belen market. Lots of people wanted us to pay to have them take us there, but Christine and I decided to just go try to find these places on our own. Belen market was easy enough to find, and really interesting. Apparently this market has barely changed for the past hundred or more years, and in it you can find anything from medicinal jungle plants to fish to meat to clothes to black market items. We didn’t see anything too crazy but apparently if you ask around you can find illegal animal parts and that kind of thing. While in the market we were caught in a torrential downpour (quite shocking/awesome after the complete absence of rain in Lima!) and it was probably at that point that we really felt like we were in rainforest country.

After Belen, we asked a mototaxi driver if he knew where a port was. We had him take us to the closest one, and went down to ask if anyone knew about this anaconda place. What followed was one of the funniest and most overwhelming moments of the trip thus far- within seconds we were surrounded by a circle of men shouting, “Adonde?” “150 soles!” “No, 120 soles!” “Donde?” and basically all trying to get our attention and tell us that they could take us to this spot, often for ridiculous prices. Luckily we were rescued by a nice man named Carlo who offered to take us in his moto and help us get to this place for 20 soles. He took us to a friend with a boat in another port- Bellavista-Nanay- where we paid 60 soles to head to this centre...which was AWESOME. Animals like monkeys, birds, and sloths were all free and running around, and were super friendly. We got climbed on by monkeys curious about our cameras, our bags, our faces, hair, etc., and also really interested in licking our sweaty arms haha. So incredibly cute. We also got to see a prehistoric turtle- so weird-looking and so cool- and we held a GIANT ANACONDA. The day was full of new experiences, as earlier we had eaten alligator and paca (a large jungle rodent) for lunch and had tried the best juice I’ve ever tasted- camu camu. The new experiences continued as the men at the centre offered us a homemade drink called “Siete Raises” or “Seven Roots,” and also known by several other more risqué names such as “Siete Veces Sin Sacar” which means “Seven Times Without Taking it Out” or another name that I forget the Spanish for but that translates to, “The Panty Breaker.” These peruanos, I tell ya- so scandulous. Needless to say it was a little bit really strong, but not too bad, and the guys gave us a bottle of it to take back with us. After visiting this centre, we went to the market by the port with Carlo. He showed us around and walked us to see a beautiful view, telling us about his friends, family, and jungle life on the way. While walking we saw a game of soccer being played on a super green field, surrounded by the jungle, overlooking the Amazon River- how awesome is that? Then we went back to the market and tried something called suri, or...larvae. They were cooked, although you can eat them raw, and they actually tasted like that Greek cheese that gets lit on fire. After this, Carlo asked if we would like to meet his wife and children, and he took us to his house to meet them. He also had a friend that ran jungle tours, so he took us to check out what he could offer and it turned out to have everything we wanted! So the afternoon worked out wonderfully for us, and early the next morning we were picked up at our hotel for our jungle adventure!

Me holding my snake friend!

Our jungle adventure consisted of 2 days and 1 night in the jungle with as many activities packed in by our guide, Sandro, as possible. Once we arrived, we went on a walk to learn about medicinal jungle plants and some animals. We were in an entirely Peruvian group, but Sandro would always give us a fantastic English translation as well. After this we ate, and then went to meet a jungle tribe called the Aguar. We were a bit torn on how we felt about this- in some respects it felt like the exploitation of a culture, but it also was an opportunity to learn about this tribe and some of the other tribes that live along the Amazon, and provide some income through purchasing some of their handicrafts. We’re still not sure, but it was an enjoyable and interesting experience nonetheless. Turns out I’m pretty decent with a blowdart, a skill honed through years of...actually, I have no idea where I could have picked up this skill, but it was pretty sweet. Additionally, on this walk Sandro showed us a termite nest. Termites can be used as a natural mosquito repellant because they produce formic acid when touched, and they can also be eaten! Obviously I tried some, and they tasted a bit lemony and not too bad at all. Between blowdarts, termites, and larvae, I’d like to think I could survive in the jungle if I needed to (when Christine was grossed out by the larvae, I pointed out that Simba ate them to survive with Timon and Pumba and he was a KING). 

After dinner, Sandro took just Christine and I out for a night time walk. We saw a ton of really cool insects and some reptiles and amphibians as well. At the very end of our walk, we found some tarantulas. You may doubt my judgement, but I was about 10,000 times more scared of the tarantula than of the giant anaconda. However, we both let Sandro put the spider on us, and he told us later that not a lot of people hold the tarantulas, so we felt pretty bad-ass. The tarantula posed nicely on Christine’s hands, but unfortunately when it was my turn it hung out on my arm for a minute and then ran at my face, at which point I decided I was happy with the photos Christine had already taken and I didn’t really need to hold it for any longer.

This monkey LOVED Christine's camera!

The next morning I went with Sandro for a 6am birding walk, which was really cool (and I knew my mom would be proud). We saw the oven bird, mockingbird, and basket-weaver birds to name just a few! We came back for breakfast, and then the whole group headed out in a boat to visit another animal rescue centre. This one was bigger (although the anacondas there were smaller) and featured lots of different and adorable monkeys, sloths, these cute lil mammals that I can’t remember the name of, parrots, macaws, and a TOUCAN. The centre was free, and the people running it help injured animals and provide a safe place for animals like monkeys to live free from predators- and as a result, people can see them in a more natural environment than a zoo. This family also sells some material at the centre, so I bought some “Una de Gato” or cat’s claw, which is supposed to be great for a whole bunch of ailments. I don’t know if I can bring it back to Canada though!

This sloth and I share the same facial expressions.

Jungle medicines in Belen market

The nest of the "oro-pendula" birds!

Such a rainforest shot- this tree very much resembled the big tree from Avatar.

Sunset on the Amazon River

 I don't have the tarantula photos of me yet, but here's our guide with the tarantula on his FACE.

These are a little out of order...here's the class I've been working with, and the compost we built out of old fruit boxes! More on this below.

The wonderful and loving Chelo, cooking away!

The raw materials for building a compost bin.

I had a great time in the Amazon, and toucan too!

After this we headed back out in search of grey and pink freshwater dolphins! The Amazon River flows into the ocean with so much force and volume that there is quite a bit of area where they meet that is mainly fresh water. This provided the opportunity for some sea creatures to adapt to fresh water, including dolphins! The pink dolphins are a different type of dolphin from the grey ones, and are pink because their skin is almost translucent and you can see their blood vessels. We were successful in finding them, at which point Sandro gave Christine and I the go-ahead the jump in! Swimming in the Amazon River- such a great experience!  The dolphins weren’t super close but regardless, we could see pink and grey dolphins jumping from the water while we swam in one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World- so. awesome.

SWIMMING IN THE AMAZON! We only lost one group member to piranhas. Kidding. Maybe.

After lunch we had to go to make it to our flight home on time. We had a lovely boat ride back and hung out in a bar overlooking the river for a little bit before trying a food called juanes- rice and chicken cooked in leaves- and it was such a nice end to our trip. I enjoyed Iquitos so much that I do not doubt that I’ll be making my way back there someday- maybe on a riverboat from Brasil? It also made me really excited for living in the jungle in Argentina in February and March!

With the Jungle Book now completed, we move on to volunteering. For the past 2 weeks Christine and I have been volunteering at Cerrito Azul in the morning, and then another school called Ramira Priale in the afternoon. They have started a Bio-Huerto project with gardens and were hoping to build a compost, so my role was to make that happen while working with a class, and to teach some English classes as well. Christine was working with a younger class teaching English, and after some discussion was able to start work with the kids on a mural beside the garden.

There were a number of truly wonderful moments doing this work, and a number of frustrating times as well. For example, it was a bit difficult to figure out the organization of the school, as sometimes some classes didn’t attend, and at other times we couldn’t find the teachers we needed, or someone with the keys to the room that had shovels in it, or where our paint had been put, and that kind of thing. However, working with the kids was hilarious and awesome! I have been working on translating information about compost from English into Spanish, which proved very useful. A secondary school teacher spoke to me about it and took the information I had to build a second compost with her students as well, so that was wicked. For my group I went to the market near Chelo’s house and purchased tons of cajas de frutas- fruit boxes. I took these back to Chelo’s, dismantled them, and brought the wood and nails to Ramiro Priale to start construction. We built an awesome compost, which was sadly destroyed by older students over night.  We carried on though, and ended up using another compost that a teacher and myself had built on my first day. I did a few English classes, and the students would bring fruit and vegetable scraps everyday to add to the pile. Other students also made signs about how to care for the compost, and what to add and not to add to it. The most exciting part was mixing the compost this week and seeing how much was decomposing already! Within a couple of months, it will be ready to add to the garden!

My friend Melissa, who has been teaching us Spanish a couple of times a week, was able to translate a bunch of information about compost to Spanish for me. I used this to make a bulletin board for the school, complete with what to add and not to add, information on why composting is important, FAQs about compost and the answers, and information on compost care. Finally, a bunch of the students helped me to poster the school to inform teachers and students about the compost bins and how to use them. Yes, you’ve read this right- I made a bulletin board, stayed late to put it up, put up posters all over the school (empowering students to assist me in this), and experienced some vandalism of my work...it would seem that my life as an RA continues in Peru.

I truly hope that after I am done volunteering here, the teachers and students continue to use the compost and keep adding to it! I’m really, really happy with how it turned out and I hope that it can be of long-term use to the school. I’m in the process of creating materials for other schools to implement this program as well, as well as information for future volunteers, in groups or alone, on how to start and implement a similar project at a different school or centre. It’s my hope that these materials will help give some guidance to future volunteers, and provide the necessary resources to implement more and more composting programs in the future! It’s so easy and beneficial that I think that people just need to be given the tools and resources to make it happen.

Speaking of which, after visiting one night and looking at my compiled information, Mariela asked me if I could make a compost for Cerrito Azul! So this week I built their compost out of dismantled fruit boxes, and Christine painted the signs. We installed the compost on Thursday, and added the signs and postered the school yesterday. Mariela and the teachers are very pleased and excited about it, and I am too.

D'Alessandro (5 years old) helping Christine and I to set the compost bin up (sometimes this involved just running at the pile of dirt and jumping on it)

The completed compost at Cerrito Azul with its awesome lid!

Jonatán throwing vegetable scraps in the compost at Cerrito Azul!

A little girl at Ramiro Priale helping me add more vegetable scraps.

The compost at Ramiro Priale, right beside their big vegetable garden.

Staying late to work on Christine's mural!

My life as an RA continues. Me and my pal Victor with the bulletin board all about compost!

Yesterday we also had a good bye lunch with the teachers at Cerrito Azul. They made us aji de gallina for lunch and we made them pancakes with fruit and maple syrup for dessert, and everyone went around and thanked us for our work, and Christine and I did our best to fumble through a thank you in return. It was really, really nice. I’ll be going back to CA for a couple of days after returning, but it was nice to have some closure yesterday nonetheless (see? Closure- RLS is following me).

That’s basically it for now! Today we’re heading to Arequipa in the afternoon for a 12 day adventure that will include Arequipa and the Colca Canyon, Puno and Lake Titicaca, and Cusco and Machu Picchu, among other attractions! I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do before we leave though, so I’ll head out for now- thanks for reading! I hope that you enjoy the photos, and I’m bringing my computer with me traveling so I’ll be in touch soon!

Lots of Love,

Cassie

Este fin de semana fue fantast-ICA!

Hola Amigos!

In the interest of writing a shorter post, I’ve decided to write a post about our weekend! We left Saturday morning for Ica on a 5 hour bus ride (with no bathroom, unfortunately). What was worse than the lack of toilet facilities, however, was the movie selection. Whilst on our merry way to Ica, we had the supreme pleasure (this is sarcasm) of viewing the 2010 film, “Frozen.” Please, friends, do yourselves a favor and don’t ever watch this movie. Allow me a brief diatribe and plot synopsis. Three friends get stuck on a ski lift at a resort, perhaps before some kind of holiday or before it shuts down for a while. Hard to tell exactly, as it was dubbed over in Spanish. So they’re stuck there for several hours and it’s night time, and the one dude is like you know what, I’mma jump from up here. Shockingly (re: sarcasm) he breaks his legs from the fall of like a hundred or fifty or some large amount of feet. So it’s a pretty crappy situation already. But oh wait, plot twist....WOLVES show up out of nowhere and after being onscreen just long enough to terrify errbody watching, they proceed to eat this poor fellow while his friends can do nothing but watch. This was the point where I turned up my iPod and tried to ignore that the movie continued. Sadly, it did, and as the IMDB has informed us, the other guy gets down, tries to escape on snowboard, and is chased down by wolves and also eaten. Finally at the end, the girl manages to get off the ski lift and down the mountain and get rescued. Unfortunately, her two best friends have now been eaten and she’s all frostbitten and understandably quite upset. End of movie. WHAT KIND OF MOVIE IS THAT? What are we supposed to take away from it? The tagline is one of my favorite parts: “With 30 million skiers and snowboarders in the US and over 5000 chairlifts in operation, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets left behind.” Not only is it the longest tagline I’ve ever seen, it’s not particularly statistically compelling and they don’t cite ANY sources.  It was not an auspicious start to our journey, but luckily our weekend was approximately ten million thousand times better than this movie. How it has achieved it’s 6.3 rating I will never know.

On to happier, sunnier, less wolf-y things...Ica! We showed up and managed to find a hostel fairly quickly that was comfortable and cheap. We walked around for a bit and looked into tours, and booked our tour of the Ballestas Islands and Paracas National Reserve for the next morning. Then we headed to the oasis in the middle of the desert- Huacachina! Huacachina is a lagoon that was originally fed by subterranean sources which are now supplemented by well water. It’s surrounded by palm trees and restaurants/hostels, which are then surrounded everywhere that you can see by sand dunes and desert. Super cool. The main attractions are dune buggies, sand boarding, and hanging out by the lagoon. We tried out sandboarding and subsequently became more covered in sand than any other people there, but it was fun. We went swimming in the lagoon, hung out for the day, and had dinner there where we had a server named Julius who was slightly terrifying (although less scary than how bad “Frozen” is).

The next morning we woke up super early to head out on our tour! It turned out that booking a tour actually meant that we had paid to have a private escort for the day, who drove us and a third woman around in his car and basically walked us through every aspect of the day. We told him we were interested in trying some Pisco, and he even set up a little tasting for us in between the islands and the reserve! It was pretty awesome. The pictures illustrate it best but it was truly incredible. The Ballestas Islands are covered in birds, including pelicans, cormorants and Humboldt PENGUINS, as well as sea lions! It was SO cool. There are a number of endangered species there, as well as many species endemic to Peru. The Paracas National Reserve was also incredibly, and is a huge reserve of desert and ocean to protect an incredible number of species. The landscape is also mind-boggling- it is literally the driest, emptiest-looking desert you can imagine on one side, and beautiful cliffs and ocean on the other. The two zones interact in numerous ways, such as lizards eating washed up sea plants and then being eaten by foxes that live in the desert. The museum at the reserve was really cool, and contained tons of information about the creation of the reserve and the biodiversity that is present in Peru. Fun fact: Peru is one of the countries that the UN has designated as “Megadiverse,” meaning that it and 16 other countries contain the majority of the world’s species and should be priorities for preservation. Check it out!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megadiverse_countries

We returned fairly late in the day, and in my case, fairly pink as well (I applied sunscreen 3 times but this apparently did not suffice). We walked around Ica some more looking for things to do but there were no evening tours and it was a Sunday evening so museums were closed. We headed back to the hostel and were delighted to find that “Camp Rock” was on television, with Spanish dubbing. I would not recommend this movie in English, but I feel that the Spanish voice overs enhanced our viewing experience quite a bit. If you have never watched Camp Rock, it’s like Highschool Musical meets The Little Mermaid meets Mean Girls but at a camp, and I do not feel that acting ability was taken into consideration for casting. It is, however, a timeless tale of heterosexual teenage love and finding yourself through music. If you watch it, watch it in Spanish.

That’s all for this post, plus some photos! Talk to you all soon!

Love,

Cassie

The lagoon in the middle of the desert!

The crazy sand dunes

Staring pensively out over the desert (actually, I'm just exhausted from climbing that thing!)

We're excited to be in a boat on the Pacific Ocean!

The Ballestas Islands!

Sea lion! A lil female

Photos!

The kiddies pile on Christine when we take them out for a picnic lunch!

Eating chifa and having the drink of Peru in San Bartolo

Our own private concert!

Victor and I by the ocean in San Bartolo :)

Belly and back rubs at Lizeth's work

Tenemos Mucho Suerte

Oh hey there friends!

I should probably start writing blog posts more regularly because I know that even in a giant post I’m going to forget to include some of the experiences we’ve had since I last wrote! However, our days have been quite busy and varied so finding the time to write has been difficult!

As I’ve mentioned before, we are so incredibly lucky to be here and to be treated as well as we are. We have been introduced to so many people who are so kind and welcoming and eager to help us have an incredible experience here. I have many examples of this to share!

A major accomplishment for last week was learning to take a combi (the small buses), on our own to Pamplona Alta. This might sound like a first-year-university-student kind of achievement, but it’s pretty complicated in Lima! As some of you know, there is no central organizing association or business to manage public transportation- it’s all privately owned. Anyone can register their vehicle as a transit vehicle and start a route. As such, there are a LOT of different vehicles and routes and there is no website or guide to help you figure out which to take. We asked our Spanish teacher, Melissa, how people learn which combi to take where, and she said if you want to go somewhere you just ask other people which vehicle or route will get you there. The downside to this is that it’s very confusing and a little dangerous. The upside is that you can go from one side of Lima to the other for just a few soles! So for example, Christine and I learned to take a combi from la C.T. (which is a section of San Juan de Miraflores near our house) to “ciudad de dios mercado” or City of God Market for about 50 centimos (half of a sol). Then we get off that combi and cross a double lane street and find the combi that takes us up to Pamplona Alta. We can take that all the way up to the community centre in Torres Mina for one sol. So for about 3 soles each we can go up to Torres Mina to teach English classes, and return to la C.T., in what would normally be at least a ten soles cab ride each way (more if we get “gringa’d” as I like to think of it when the cab drivers purposefully overcharge us). It can be a bit dangerous- on our first solo ride back down to la C.T. there were two guys who were hardcore eyeing up our backpacks- but Victor gave us some tips to stay safe and those were the only issues we experienced. I just tried to look really tough and strong when the guys were checking our bags out, and they got off soon after so either it worked or stealing our backpacks was not a task worth missing their stop for.

After volunteering for the week, we had a wonderful weekend in Lima with some new Peruvian friends. We had gone out with Luciano and some of his friends Halloween night, and met several really nice (and English-speaking!) people. One of them, Juan Diego, offered to meet up with us to see some museums and sights in historic Lima. After Saturday morning Spanish classes, we headed to the Museum of the Inquisition with Juan Diego. Unfortunately the tour was in Spanish, so past catching the “bienvenidos al museo de la inquisición,” I was pretty lost. Juan Diego caught us up on some parts though, and the museum itself was quite interesting. After that we caught a tour bus up to San Cristobal, a big cross a-whay up high on a mountain. The ride was mildly terrifying (we told Juan Diego that if we plunged to our deaths we would no longer be his friends), but the view from the top was incredible. A particularly hilarious moment: When we were admiring the view of Lima, a Peruvian woman walked up to me and held out her child. Not quite knowing what to do, I took her kid from her, and then realized that she and her husband wanted photos of their two year old daughter with Christine and I. I am still not quite sure why, as we had never met them before, but I hope that we are immortalized in some small way in a photograph on a mantel somewhere in Peru! I think part of it is the blonde hair. We were talking to Lizeth today and she was saying that in most of Peru people have relatively similar skin tone and hair color, so having pale (or in my case pink) skin and blonde hair is a big novelty. It’s really interesting to be in a country where your identity as a foreigner stands out so strongly, and where in many cases it carries with it more privilege or at least guarantees that in some way you will be treated very differently (in both positive and negative ways).  It’s difficult to walk around without being noticed, that’s for sure. Back to the couple and their child: We told Juan Diego that we’re actually very famous in Canada and these people probably recognized us from all of our movies and tv shows and book signings and other things that we’re famous for. After a slightly less terrifying, but nonetheless scary ride down the mountain, we headed to the water park for dinner and the show. It still blows my mind that in the middle of a desert there’s a giant water park, while people in the higher shanty towns struggle to have water transported to their homes.

Juan Diego then invited us back to his apartment, and to the birthday party of a friend of his. We didn’t want to intrude, but were so happy when we ended up going because everyone was so friendly and we had such a good time. At Juan Diego’s we had a chance to hang out more, drink some Pisco (which I’ve come to like a lot more!), share some Peruvian and Canadian music, and watch an AWESOME documentary about a town in Nebraska called Peru. I’ll post it! After this, we went to Rodrigo’s birthday party at his incredible apartment in Surco. It was on the top floor and had a retractable roof over a small pool. Everyone there spoke English phenomenally well, and we had a great time meeting everyone. Christine and I were talking at the party and we feel like we are getting a really varied and rich experience, from volunteering in the shanty towns to living in San Juan to visiting more tourist-y areas and the more well-off parts of Lima as well. Additionally, in all of these places we are being welcomed with open arms and we have the opportunity to talk to lots of different people about their experiences. I feel as though in many ways this is a truly 3-dimensional experience, and perhaps the only way to improve it would be to live and work here for longer.

We have found a cab driver named Juan who we feel very comfortable with, so we are able to call him for rides to and from different places in Lima. Around 2am we headed home, although Rodrigo informed us that his intent was to party until 6am. Truthfully, I’m too old (almost 30, some might say- just kidding) and value sleep far too much for that!

The next day we headed to Miraflores for the day. We were sucked in by the Inca market (it gets me every time!) but it was an incredibly successful Christmas shopping adventure. We headed to the beach for a bit, and then went to dinner at San Antonio’s...complete with frozen maracuya juice. Oh dios mio- I missed it over the summer!

This week started with a bit of a slump for me, as I was sick Monday and Tuesday. After sleeping a silly number of hours and not eating for a day I was way better, and I feel totally fine now. We had made a date with Luciano to go for ceviche on Tuesday, which wasn’t awesome on my stomach but it still tasted delicious. We then went with Victor to check out our new volunteer placement for the afternoons. It’s a school in San Juan and it is so, so cool. They have a couple of small gardens and want help with them, and are excited by the idea of building some composters. We returned there today to confirm some details with one of the school directors, Gladys, and it looks like for the last two weeks that we’ll be volunteering together we will be in Cerritos Azul for the morning, and work in this new school for the afternoon- Christine teaching English to 6 year olds and potentially helping with art classes, and me working on an ecology project in the gardens with 8 year olds. So it sounds like the most perfect volunteer placement I could think of! I am very, very excited and I hope that it works out well! It officially starts on Monday, so I’ll have more updates in my next post!

On Wednesday we accompanied Victor for his day of work, visiting a Solidaridad en Marcha collaborative project in a nursing home in Callao. I got my butt kicked at checkers by an elderly Peruvian man, although I still contest that he had some liberal interpretations of the rules regarding the abilities of a King. We were then given a ride by two women, Cecilia and Amelia, who are a part of a Catholic organization in which women dedicate their lives to service. They were so incredibly nice and after dropping Amelia off at her home, Cecilia gave us a full tour of the beachfront and other districts such as San Isidro. Victor had offered to take us to San Bartolo for chifa (a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian cuisine) and we obviously said yes to this- not knowing that San Bartolo is just over 40 kilometres to the south! We are so happy we went though, for so many reasons. We got to visit a SEM centre for music and theatre education, and while we were there two music students and their teacher gave us a private classical piano concert which was absolutely beautiful. At this centre, they offer students from poor and middle classes the opportunity to study music and theatre from an early age. We were told about one student who lives in a poor area on a farm. At 4am he is out in the barn milking cows, and by 10am he is in school- and he has found that his work on the farm has strengthened his hands and he is a phenomenal pianist. The centre felt like a completely different world, and we were both incredibly overwhelmed by it. Victor also gave us a wonderful tour of  San Bartolo, which is where he grew up. We saw some of the places that he has lived, his old school, and the church where he and Lizeth were married almost exactly one year ago (their anniversary is this Sunday the 13th!). He took us to one of his favorite restaurants, and we spent some time running around by the beach and taking photos of the Pacific. If you ever go to Lima, I would highly recommend paying the 5 whole soles to ride down the Panamerican Highway and check out San Bartolo. Lima often feels hectic, crowded, and overwhelming, while San Bartolo was peaceful, tranquil, and filled with gentle breezes off the ocean. Christine and I decided that if we ever lived in Lima, it’d be in San Bartolo, and we’d put up with the commute into the city to do it! We left around 6pm as the sun was setting, and I wish I had a photo of us as we reached the highway and saw our bus pulling up- on the opposite side, heading back into the more populated part of the city. With the sun setting over the ocean behind us and cars and buses racing by below, Christine, Victor and myself ran at full speed up the stairs and across a walkway that extends over the Panamerican Highway shouting at the bus to wait, and made it on for the 45 minute ride back. All in all, I think it was one of the best days we’ve had here so far.

The next day we went with Lizeth to visit one of her places of work in the district of Lurin (we have also found out that Lima has a LOT of districts!). Lurin is located off of the Panamerican Highway about 30 minutes away from San Juan, and is an “ecological centre” in Lima, although I’m not quite sure what that means except that there are some farms on the way there. It’s really interesting how different many of the districts are from each other. Going from Barranco to San Juan to Central Lima to Lurin to San Bartolo, you might not even know that you’re still in the same city.

Lizeth’s work was really cool. In the mornings, she works at a school for children with disabilities as a physical therapist. We got to watch her work today and help out a bit, and it was really special. For children with more difficulties she has one on one appointments, and for classes with less physical disabilities she does group work. She has a wonderful space to work in that is very calm, and it was so wonderful to see children with a range of abilities doing balancing exercises, learning to fall safely, etc. At the end of the group session, all of the little boys we were working with had lotion rubbed on their bellies, backs, and arms, and had boards with different textures of materials rubbed on their hands and bellies to learn what they feel like. At the risk of sounding cheesy, it was a really gentle and loving experience to work with these children, and Lizeth is so good with them. After helping Lizeth with a group, Christine and I rotated between different classrooms helping out until about 12:45, and then went to a lunch at a little restaurant in Lurin. 7 whole soles (about $2.50) later I’d had an appetizer and a full meal of chicken, rice, yucca, and of course aji. I don’t know if food prices are so comparatively low because Peru is a developing country, or because restaurants can’t charge more or they wouldn’t have customers, or if low prices accurately reflect how inexpensive food can be when it doesn’t have to travel as far and prices aren’t inflated. It’s probably a combination of many of these factors and others. Either way, I think it’s interesting how accustomed we are in Canada to paying ridiculously high prices for often low-quality processed food, or to ship in food from far away, when we have access to so much arable land and water.

Beyond this, we’ve been trying to plan our travels for the weekends and for the end of November until December 7th or so. It’s been surprisingly difficult! It seems that to find services in English you have to jump right to the swanky, tourist-y companies that look lovely, but probably aren’t the kind of experience we’re looking for. Raoul sent me a contact of his in Cusco though, and Apolo is helping us to set up a customized tour of Arequipa, the Colca Canyon, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno, and Lake Titicaca and the Uros Islands. We are just waiting for flight dates from Maria at Sol Travel, and we should be good! We’ve also been very lucky in planning some other adventures. Today I ran into Jorge, Lizeth’s brother-in-law, on the way to Cerritos Azul and he gave me a ride there (he and Mariel, Lizeth’s sister, run the school). He offered to help us organize a bus to Ica, which to him meant finding the bus line we needed, explaining everything to me, and offering to drive Christine and I to the bus station himself! So at 5am in the morning we’re getting picked up by Jorge and being driven to the bus station, where we will catch a bus for 30 soles for the 4-5 hour ride to Ica. Jorge said that Mariel is in Ica right now, so she will meet us and help acquaint us with the city (when things like this happen, which is pretty much every day, Christine and I just look at each other with these mirrored looks of “How the f*** are we so lucky?” on our faces). Once in Ica we’re hoping to book a tour to the Ballestas Islands in Paracas for Sunday, and then head to Huacachina to try sandboarding and hopefully spend Saturday night there! We’ll see what happens.

I should wrap up, but first a funny anecdote: We’ve been meeting a lot of teachers and we usually get asked the same questions. We get asked our names, what country we’re from, how long we’re here for, where we’re staying, and what Canada is like (most often: is it really cold and big, and are there bears). Next we get asked how old we are, and if we have husbands, children, or boyfriends. When I say no to all of these things (well, I tell them my age obviously), I get asked, again, if I’m single. When my response is a yes, invariably the reaction is an incredibly dramatic, “Pero por queeeeeeeee?!” Basically, “But whyyyyy?!” Then they say, “Pero tu eres guapa!” or “Pero tienes pelo muy guapo!” ie “But you’re pretty!” or “But you have very pretty hair!” which always makes me laugh for a lot of reasons (it also makes me want to update my eHarmony profile to say, “I’m pretty and have nice hair. Date me.” Kidding. What’s eHarmony?) And then I am usually asked if I am perhaps looking for an hombre peruano, to which I usually say that I need to be single to travel. Anyways, I don’t really have the heart or the balls to tell them the real reason I have no boyfriend back home (Beau hasn’t asked me yet) but these repeated moments are suuuper funny. Christine keeps telling them to not worry, I’ll get a boyfriend someday soon. That’s why we’re here together- she’s so encouraging!

I honestly can’t say it enough: we are so lucky to be here. Chelo is so caring and SUCH a mom. She makes us so much delicious food and fresh fruit juice every morning. We are so well taken care of by everyone that I don’t think our volunteer hours can even measure up to how much we are being given back. I truly hope that with this next volunteer placement we can be of true service and leave something beneficial behind for the school to use. I am also still hoping to build a composter for Chelo, and create a guide for families in San Juan de Miraflores to have their own backyard composters. We’ll see what the next couple of weeks bring!

Thanks for reading this everyone! I haven’t been journalling very much because usually by the time I’m in bed I just want to read and fall asleep (plus I just read The Kite Runner- finally!- so that trumped my journal every time), but I’ve found writing these posts very helpful as a way to reflect on our experiences and record what we’ve been doing during our time here. Hopefully we can turn these reflections into a helpful guide to future volunteers at the end of our trip!

Much love to everyone back home, and many thanks for the comments and emails! More photos to come soon!

Abrazos y besos,

Cassie

P.S. The Peru, Nebraska documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAqFJP4N4ME

A couple photos...

These take a LONG time to upload so I won't upload too many, but the first is a photo of myself and Stefania, a student from Cerritos Azul, after their fiesta. The second photo is a few of the girls from Pamplona Alta after English classes.

There's A Fiesta For Everything Here!

Hola amigos!

As you can see, I’ve decided to try writing a blog and see how I like it! This will be to document my travels from Peru to Argentina to Austin to who-knows-where over the next 8-12 months! This first post will probably be a bit massive to tell you about our house and volunteer tasks, so future posts can just be updates on what we’ve been doing.

Christine and I have been in Peru for just over a week now and so far it’s been quite lovely. In the mornings we have been volunteering at a school for kids with disabilities called Cerritos Azul, and we just started teaching English classes to children in Pamplona Alta at the community centre in Torres Mina on Thursday. At the moment, the English classes are less useful sessions and more carrying around 2-3 VERY excited children at once while the rest yell and run around like mad and ask us, “Como se dice ‘papas’ in español?” and then laugh hysterically when we respond with, “Potatoes!” It’s really, really fun and funny but we’re hoping to talk to Victor and see if maybe we can divide up the kids by their ages so that the older kids can learn some more complex stuff. The way it works right now is in the afternoon we are either met by someone in a mototaxi or who takes us in a bus up to the shantytown. When we get there, a woman from the soup kitchen goes on the loudspeaker and yells out to the community to send their children to English classes and the kids come running out of everywhere and get us to chase them before we round them up for “class”- so it’s a wee bit informal but so ridiculously fun.

Cerritos Azul is a really cool place to be at. The people who run it are Mariel (Victor’s sister-in-law) and her husband Jorge who are so incredibly kind and wonderful. There’s a sliding scale for parents to pay and the children are divided into classrooms by ages. I’ve been volunteering in the oldest classroom so the students range from around 12 to 26 years old! The students in my class have very high needs and it’s been a little bit frustrating because there seems to be a lot of time where they are being told to sit down and wait but I’m not sure what for. Some of the students are told to sit down a lot but they don’t want to do that and they act out by chewing their hair, yelling, taking off and running away, and breaking things. I get a bit frustrated because I think if there were more resources, training, or staff maybe some of these students could be given constructive tasks to work on. I think it’s really hard for the teachers though, and it’s difficult for me to understand fully how best to help because of the language barrier. Last week I purchased some plasticine and I’m going to see tomorrow if the teachers are open to sharing it with the students, and if that helps. Over only a few days I’ve grown really attached to the students and I hope that this week has less frustrating moments.

We quickly found out that in Peru, there’s a celebration for EVERYTHING. It’s really, really great. Last Saturday we went to the celebration for Solidaridad en Marcha’s anniversary, then during the week Christine and I each had birthday celebrations for students in our classes...then on Friday we went to an SEM campaign and even though we only ended up helping out for about 45 minutes, we were invited to celebrate the anniversary of the clinic we were at with causa and cake...and then today we attended the celebration of the anniversary of Cerritos Azul where all of the kids did traditional dances with their teachers and classes and Peruvian celebrities donated their time to help with the ceremonies. At all of these celebrations they have traditional Peruvian food, dancing, CAKE, and often little cups of really sweet wine and cups of beer. I’m beginning to think that we need to learn to celebrate what we have in Canada a little more, because getting this much cake, causa, and aji de gallina every week (not to mention the dancing and general enthusiasm) is really wonderful and makes me feel truly lucky.

Speaking of wonderful, my mind is blown by Peruvian hospitality! Everyone here is so incredibly nice to us and so generous with their time, houses, food, warmth, everything. As Christine and I’ve discussed, it’s for “no reason at all,” but I think that maybe that’s the best reason of all. I appreciate so much being treated so well without having to earn it, and it makes me want to open my heart and home to others as well.  I think that if the whole world could adopt this warmhearted, open approach, there wouldn’t be nearly so much paranoia and fear and the ensuing reactions to those emotions. For example, we were asked if we could teach English to some folks that work for SEM, so yesterday we went to Leyla’s boyfriend’s house and taught Leyla, Junior, Milagritos, and Leyla’s boyfriend’s sister English for a while, and were then treated to an INCREDIBLE lunch of rotisserie chicken (which was cooked in their rooftop oven!), potatoes, rice, salad, and avocado, and then Junior and Milagritos accompanied us to an Inca Market near the airport- even though they had nothing they wanted to buy. They then accompanied us all the way home even though they live near the airport- they just wanted to keep us company and make sure we were safe. It’s really incredible how much time and energy people are willing to give to one another here and as visitors to this country we are receiving so much goodwill.

The house we live in is fantastic. We didn’t meet the woman who owns the house, Chelo (Victor’s mother-in-law) until Friday because her mother died a bit before we got here, but when we met her I instantly loved her. She is so so so friendly and warm and such a grandmother- she brought back these really amazing treats called roscas con azucar, fruit, potatoes, cake, bread, and kept offering all of these foods to us over and over again. She is so fantastic- she told us she loves to talk so it will be good practice for us in understanding Spanish haha. She also gives a fantastic ego boost, because she is always telling us what beautiful hair we have, how beautiful we are, and how nice our clothes are, and then when I was on skype with my sister and mother last night she came over to talk to them and tell them how wonderful I am and how happy she is with me. So if I’m ever feeling down, I just ask Chelo what she thinks about my outfit and I feel a thousand times better! To give a great example of what Chelo is like, in the middle of writing this post she called Christine and I into the kitchen for “un poquito de sopa, una sopita” ie “a little bit of soup, just a little” which amounted to a big bowl of delicious, homemade chicken noodle soup to which Chelo kept adding, “uno mas papita” ie “one more little potato” even as we were in the process of eating the giant portion she had already given us. So great. She is incredibly excited for her granddaughter, Lizeth and Victor’s daughter, to be born in January, and from everything I’ve seen she is and will be the most wonderful abuelita ever. I’m still working on getting them to name the baby after me and I think they’re warming up to it :)

Some particularly cool/funny moments so far: 

• Luciano and his friends have started a project in Pamplona Alta where every few weeks they project a movie for the community to come watch, to share values with the children and to create a family-friendly event. Luciano is working on getting people from outside communities to also attend to remove the stigma of a free movie being held in a poor shantytown, and it is a really beautiful thing to see. Christine and I were lucky enough to attend the last part of the movie on Thursday, and Victor told us that we were the first Canadians to be in Pamplona Alta at night. It was really amazing and we got to walk around for a while afterward- such an amazing experience. Victor said that one night we may even be able to sleep in Pamplona Alta! I think this would be an incredible experience.

• The sheer amount we get hit on is astounding. No one has made us feel very uncomfortable but there’s definitely been some funny shared moments, such as today when two men walked by us, stared at us the whole way by, then in unison wheeled around to walk after us shouting, “Hey! Bonitas! You are beautiful!” Another man basically said the equivalent of, “I would like you to eat my penis,” to which my response was, not surprisingly, “No, gracias.” Let me tell you...he really knew how to talk to a girl! No worries though, a “No, gracias,” usually is quite effective at deterring the curious hombres, and no one has been uncomfortably pushy or forward.

• The experience of living where we are is so cool- we are actually living in the more developed part of the shantytown of San Juan de Miraflores, which is a part of the city that tourists never even hear about, let alone get to go to. It’s not even in guide books about Peru, but it’s the way that so many Peruvians live. The area itself is safe, and we’re close to a busy street and a fruit/vegetable market where we go to buy food for dinner, and some really amazing little bakeries. Getting to live here and experience this part of Lima is a huge privilege. And for all of you who have been on a PSI Peru trip in the past, be jealous: Not only do we get to live with Chelo, but Victor and his wife Lizeth have a little apartment attached to this house, so we are all living together and we get to hang out with both Victor and Lizeth on a regular basis!

• Learning Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country, and on top of that, how much I already understand. We are having Spanish classes 2-3 times a week, although they’re starting a bit slowly so I’m hoping that this week will be a bit more intense! In general though, if people are willing to speak slowly I’ve felt very good about how much I can understand, and how much I can communicate back. It’s obviously a bit frustrating sometimes, and I often feel quite lost, but it’s making me feel very motivated to learn as much as I can while I’m here. Many of the people we see regularly- Victor, Lizeth, Chelo, Milagritos, Leyla, Mariel, etc. are so patient with us and are very good about speaking slowly and simply and illustrating with hand actions to help us along, and everyone is eager to practice their English in return.

Well, this post is getting a bit ridiculously long but I’ll try to update again in a week or so! There’s many more stories and photos and moments to share, but I’ll leave it at this for now. I’m very happy here and I feel very safe and lucky to be where I am. In conversation with Jorge and Mariel earlier this week they told us that there are not really  volunteers in Peru, because in trying to get by there often isn’t the time or resources for people to volunteer (although I would argue that the amount of heart and soul that many people put into their jobs here amounts to volunteer-esque enthusiasm and hours!). I’m coming to realize that even being able to volunteer my time in another country is an incredible privilege, and an amazing learning experience. I feel as though much of our volunteering right now will make an impact only in the present moment, so it is my hope to work with Luciano, Victor, and others to develop some projects that will also be useful to the people of San Juan de Miraflores in the future. Luciano and I have spoken a bit about developing a composting model and guide for people to use in their homes, and I’m really excited to work further on this with him and Victor!

Know that I am thinking of you all a lot while remaining present in my work and activities here, and love receiving emails and facebook messages from home. We have an internet connection in our home, so if anyone would like to skype at some point I would love that :) Just email me and let me know!

Much love and Peruvian sunshine to all of you!

Cassie (or, as they call me here, “Casi Casi” which means “almost almost.”)