Actually March 29th

Well. Easter vacation starts in six days, when we (Andrew, Tessa, Melissa, and I) will be headed to the beach in Piura for a few days. Some of you may have noticed that I did, in fact, just return from the beach a mere two weeks ago. That is just how this month is. I am having trouble getting my ganas to do a lot of things I could be doing at site right now, I think because I’m only ending up with a little over a week in site; it’s hard to even catch my breath before it’s time to leave again. I have my river cleanup and my first English class scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday. I need to plan the charla for water appreciation (which should not be that hard, World Water Day was not long ago and can be easily mushed thematically), and I just can’t inspire myself to do it. I also need to plan my first English class, which doesn’t include more than teaching greetings, numbers, and “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.” Unfortunately, I cannot, for the life of me, remember the words to “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.” Seriously. If that sounds silly, try to sing it in your head right now. I’ll bet well over half of you won’t get past the title lyrics. I guess I will have to pay the sol-per-minute for a five-second-delay phone call to Tessa to have her sing it for me. It was her idea to begin with.

Every morning (except Sundays) that I’m in Piura, when I walk past the bank, there is a mind-boggling number of people in line. It is truly mind-blowing, if only because I can never figure out for the life of me what they are all doing there. All government employees (including teachers, I think) are on direct deposit. There are ATMs. What are all these people doing in 50-yard line outside the bank every single morning? Well, Tessa and I became two of those people Monday morning. So I guess that answers about .02% of my question for that day. We were in the final stages of the stressful project of planning Easter vacation, which involved depositing money in the hotel’s bank account. Because that is apparently how things work here. The line actually wasn’t that bad (beyond the normal stress I have waiting in lines in this country. I swear, one of the greatest things about developed countries, most of them anyway, is the concept of personal space. That and free ice water at restaurants), plus there was this sweet bonus at the end where we walked past the “special needs” line, which turned out to be just mothers with babies and old people who wanted to sit in line. Just to give you an image of how vicious Peruvian lines are, we witnessed one old person accuse another of being “not special needs enough.” It’s like a freaking episode of South Park. But anyway, it was quite the home stretch, as Peruvian babies are generally adorable, and we got to stare at a differing set of them, unabashedly, for a good twenty minutes. In that home stretch, Tessa and I came to quite the realization: we like to stare at babies because they’re cute. Peruvians like to stare at us because we’re white, and moreover, Tessa has red hair. So when we walk past a mom with a cute baby, we stare at her, she stares at us, and EVERYONE’S HAPPY. Greatest symbiosis ever.

This weekend in Piura made me realize that there are some things about Peru that will probably always drive me insane. I’ve been good at having a thick skin to the catcalls in Piura, but I fear that the 1,000th Piuran to say “Ooo, mi amor!” or, the creepiest yet, “Ooo, que rico!” is just going to get smacked in the face, and I will be powerless to stop myself. I expect it when I wear something low-cut, and that is just the price I pay to be comfortable in the 95-degree Piura heat, but really, there is no excuse when I am in a button-down blouse and below-the-knee skirt. I wonder what Peace Corps’s policy is on face-smacking. It is probably not favorable, but then, who would denunciar me?

Also on the list of things that will always drive me insane is, as Brett put it when I told him this story, an over-emphasis on ends over means. As I mentioned, it is hot as hell in Piura (look on a map, and you will find me not far from the equator), especially on the second floor of our hostel. At 3 a.m. one night this weekend, our fan shut off. I didn’t notice, but I woke up to Tessa playing with the fan, eventually carrying it downstairs to exchange it for a working one. However, upon arriving downstairs, Tessa discovered that there was nothing wrong with the fan, it was that the electricity on our entire floor had been shut off. Why, you might ask? Because someone down the hall had their TV up too loud and would not answer the door when the manager knocked. So their solution to this problem was to indefinitely shut off the electricity on the entire second floor. Now, I know little about the hotel managing game, but I’m pretty sure there are about 14 solutions more reasonable than shutting off an entire floor’s electricity. To be fair, however, it did get that TV to shut up.

So it goes. Next entry, 30 kids learn why they shouldn’t throw trash in the river and how to say “Good morning.”