HAPPY EPILOGUE

My mom made Pachamanca today. And it was all I could have hoped for and more. It also contributed to the confusion in my house, because my friends came over to work on a project on the patio, and when I came back into the house, the furniture was being reupholstered by my cousin and there was Pachamanca on the stove, neither of which I had any previous information about. My family must just not tell me things sometimes to avoid me being confused in the same way I sometimes avoid situations that require me to explain things (that then confuse them). Maybe it's a symbiosis. Maybe it's a communication gap. Definitely it involved me eating Pachamanca today.

I think this blog entry shall be organized into lists:

Things I’m Happy About This Week, in an American Way:

1. Getting the stabilizer for my laptop, thereby not having to write emails/entries in the internet cabinas for a whopping S/.1 per hour. Also, reclaiming my music. I am listening to Jesus Christ Superstar as I write this, and it’s putting me in an incredibly good mood.
2. Sort of getting used to cold showers. The key is to close your eyes and pretend it’s a pristine mountain waterfall. Or, if that fails, just acknowledge that you only have to be under the water for three minutes and start the countdown.
3. Realizing my house has ESPN, consequently watching the Tigers games (that is, when Peru wasn’t losing to Chile in soccer on another channel).

Things I’m Happy About This Week, in a Peace Corps Way:

1. Finally scheduling our community development activity: three nutrition workshops with elementary school kids. We have two tomorrow with some of the older kids during their gym class, which should be fine. The slightly more daunting task comes Thursday, which is one big workshop with 80 first-, second-, and third-graders. Good Lord. This project has also provided me with one of my favorite moments of training, when fellow Trainee Kevin and I walked through the elementary school and were met with hundreds of small Peruvian stares.
Kevin: God, you’d think they’d never seen a gringo before.
Me: Maybe they haven’t.
Kevin: I was here yesterday.
Me: Oh.
2. Having a stellar workshop in how to hold a community meeting.
3. Composting.

Things I’m Happy About This Week, in a Bilingual Way:
1. Correctly saying, off the top of my head, the sentence, “If I know who she was, I would talk to her.”
2. Having a good enough language interview to get moved into the next higher language level. Hurrah.

Things I’m Marginally Homesick For:
1. (Ye Olde) Franklin Cider Mill specifically, Michigan apple season generally.
2. Trees changing colors.
3. Soy products generally, a tofu pop from Red Hot Lovers specifically.
4. My yet nonexistent diploma. Did I graduate?

In other news, it’s one month in-country today, and every day is one day closer to finally knowing our sites. We’ll know those in about three weeks, and in the meantime, we’re writing our site preferences, so hey, another list:

Alyssa’s Site Priorities:
1. A project in protected area management and/or income generation.
2. Mountains (versus coast).
3. Semi-rural, but not so remote as to make a trip to the department capital an insurmountable inconvenience.

But like they say, every site has its advantages and disadvantages. If I ended up on a recycling project in an urban coastal community, I would embrace it. Almost none of the decision is in my hands, so Peace Corps flexibility is a necessary strategy.

From the sounds of it, my 4-year-old brother is having a dance party in the living room, so I am going to investigate.