The second year begins, first ever real-time post

First of all, the municipality got internet, fast internet, which means I have ridiculously convenient access to the world a mere block from my adobe, non-indoor plumbed house. Every single other post in this blog has been pre-written, given me absurdly long to elaborate my puns, etc. Until now. A new age, indeed.

Second, my one-year anniversary in Santo Domingo was yesterday. A year ago yesterday, I was unloading my new mattress from the regional coordinator's car, playing volleyball with a neighbor-girl named Elsa, and feeling generally overwhelmed. Yesterday, to come full circle, Elsa dropped off her cat at my house for a fun, rat-killing sleepover. Before I left for Thanksgiving vacation, I noticed suspiciously rodent-y traits in my kitchen (popcorn spread all over the shelves with the inside kernel missing, etc.) but I assumed it was just a cute little mouse, which I could deal with. Within a couple hours of being back, though, I realized (with much screaming) that it was in fact a large rat. As in, I've seen smaller squirrels. (Not on the Michigan campus, where the squirrels more resemble overfed baby bears, but in life generally.) I immediately decided that the best course of action was to run up and down my street begging my neighbors for their cats. One neighbor told me their cat was too pregnant. Another told me theirs was too small. I felt like some sort of hellish Goldilocks. After setting a trap that was probably also too small for this job, I found myself unable to actually sleep in my infested apartment, and showed up to Charo's house, where she gave me the bed of the Volunteer I replaced. The next night, after a repeat appearance of the rat, I more or less demanded the neighbor's cat despite their absence, and let everyone on the street know that if the cat were to show up, that it was to go to my house. The cat was cute and very cuddly, but sort of dumb and drooly. I did not know cats could drool until last night. She did not kill the rat but did knock over my sink water and barf twice all over my floor. Uncool, but the rat didn't seem to eat any of my food, so...cool. I'll keep you posted.

I also marked my one-year anniversary at site by throwing a hissy fit at a high school teacher for burning an entire field of grass in the middle of the town. He responded by saying it was impossible that they could ever compost the grass (even though my project has entirely adequate compost piles a ten-minute walk from where he was burning), and that it was pretty silly that I would come yell at him for endangering the respiratory systems of an entire street when I come from the United States, where we have nuclear waste and other "real" environmental problems. I ran to Teo's house in tears after this interaction, and she gave me the dirt on the teacher. This is what I love about a small town: if you are ever upset with someone, you can always find someone to tell you all the horrible things that guy has ever done. "This teacher made me really upset today." "Yeah, he's been reported to the school district for an unhealthy interest in teenage girls." Or, "I'm sort of mad at my friend." "Yeah, he had to leave Lima because he was evading taxes." Sure, gossip is generally destructive and doesn't help anyone, but it can make you feel really good at the time. To show the up-and-down nature of Peace Corps, that very night a guy from Rotary Club showed up to my door (literally), and offered to present the trash project to seek additional funding. Sometimes, it's just that easy.

Thanksgiving in Cajamarca was awesome, in other news. Cheese, low-security zoos with cute Andean anteojo bears, hot springs, beautiful mountain views? Go there. It was incredible. Thanksgiving involved no turkey, but it did involve an amazing fusion restaurant, where I ate both trout and duck. As part of my resolutions for next year, here are some pictures:

OMG bears

Andrew and I at Cumbe Mayo

Hey look, rocks.

This is what Cajamarca looks like.

So my resolutions for year 2 are as follows:

1. Kick more ass

2. Do cooler stuff with my spare time

3. Be less oblivious to what goes on in my town

4. Be less angry with Peru absurdities

5. Get stuff DONE

6. Add more visual interest to this blog

And that's about it.

Aniversario Dominicano

Santo Domingo’s anniversary party was last week, and in case the grammar of that clause leaves this unclear, I mean to say the party lasted all week. There was a program listing the week’s events handed out in the cracks underneath doors the previous week, and upon reading it, I realized that if I had wanted to celebrate Santo Domingo’s 120 years of independent reign 24 hours a day for an entire week, I could have. Here is a summary:

October 31st: When I could have been sharing our own tradition of costumes and candy, I was instead on the judging panel of the annual beauty pageant to crown “Señorita Santo Domingo” and “Señorita Feria.” This is the second beauty pageant I’ve judged this year (the first was one of the high school’s). So, that makes the breakdown of beauty pageants judged in my lifetime: first 21 years of life, 0; 22nd year of life, 2. The first beauty pageant was more stressful for me, as there were only two judges and four contestants, so when the “wrong” girl was chosen, it was clear for whom the resulting boos were intended. This time, there were five judges and twelve contestants, and (thank God) no clear fan favorite for the crown. There were three rounds: traditional dress, formal dress, and “interview.” The interview questions were given to us, as well as the contestants, ahead of time. Unfortunately, the person writing the questions failed to decide if they were going to be “regurgitation” or “thinking” questions, so while some were along the lines of, “When was the earthquake this year and what region of Peru did it affect?” and some were, “What should be done to combat domestic violence in Santo Domingo?” It did not exactly make for a level playing field. The pageant part of the event was actually pretty fun, what was not fun was the two-hour break the girls took to change one outfit. I finally went upstairs to the dressing room to hurry things along, not accepting the emcee’s explanation of, “Así son las chicas.” I was actually thanked by Flor on behalf of the audience later, which made me laugh, because Peruvians often consider a disregard for time something of a cultural value. Anyway, it all turned out okay, the girls who appeared most poised and confident did win, there was no booing, and I was home by midnight.

November 2nd: There was a dance party that I was only somewhat committed to going to, although it did have a rather pleasant Spanish guitar-type band that I thoroughly enjoyed. This was the night my friend Cynthia, in town from Piura, introduced me to “calentado,” or hot cañazo (sugar cane liquor) with cinnamon. Cañazo by itself is pretty rough to take, but for some reason, heat it up and add cinnamon, and it is delicious. So there’s the answer to the “What do I do with this bottle of cañazo I have lying around my house” problem, a dilemma I know I have inflicted on some of my friends in the past.

November 3rd: This time, I was ready to go out, thanks to late naps and coffee. The night started with the presentation of traditional Peruvian dances, which I always love, especially when they are performed my impossible-to-embarrass preschoolers and consist of little more than running in place in elaborate costumes. After the dances was the burning of the castillo, which may be the COOLEST PERUVIAN TRADITION EVER. Some professional on the coast builds a two-story elaborate structure of bendable guayaquil (bamboo), complete with spinning wheels and ridiculous pyrotechnics. The castillo burns from the bottom up, each fire setting off the fuse to burn the level above it. Each level (there are about five) has fireworks and sparklers that set off the wheels to spin. Some levels had bonuses, like the words “Feliz Aniversario” written out in sparkler, or a model of the saint that is the town’s namesake that floats down on a rig toward the audience. I was awed into a general silence punctuated with frequent, uncontrollable, “Yay!”s. Seriously, this is the tradition I would bring back to the U.S. with me, if it weren’t for those pesky fire codes. Something tells me the frequency with which I was told, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter when firework chunks fall on you, they don’t continue to burn” that night tells me this is not the easiest tradition to transfer to the developed world.

The castillo was followed by a dance party, at which I stayed until a remarkable 4 a.m. The reason I stayed that late was even more remarkable: I was just having fun. If that sounds to you like an incredibly obvious thing to say, you have never been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Latin America. More obvious reasons to stay at parties include blatant peer pressure, fear of missing out on social integration, fear of missing out on the only thing people are getting done that week, etc. But I went out with Cynthia and some other girls my age who were in town from the University of Piura (which is on indefinite strike. Bad for education levels, good for my social life) and we danced and drank all night and it was just good fun. I had forgotten how fun it is to “go out with the girls.” I also realized that I still have some to learn about small-town dynamics the next day, when Cynthia informed me her dad grounded her for staying out that late…a block away from her house.

November 4th: The day of the actual anniversary. I did little that day, except attend a parade that turned out to be a lot of schoolchildren goose-stepping, so I tactfully bowed out. This was also the day I pseudo-moved into Rachel’s room due to painful noise levels in my part of town. At the time of writing this, Rachel is still in Argentina following the Buenos Aires marathon, so it will be really pretty creepy if reading this is how she finds out I blatantly invaded her personal space in order to avoid total sleep deprivation. Then again, I did find a note to me on her desk wishing me luck at the pageant, so it can’t be totally unexpected.

November 5th: I found myself exhausted and sick of party. Besides what I wrote about here, I had attended two barbecues and one saint procession. So I retired up the mountain to Chalaco (ironically, the city from whom we were celebrating our independence), and hung out with my good friend Casey for a couple days. It turned out to be a lot of party at her house, too, with a pig slaughter and birthday celebrations for her host dad, but it was on a scale (both of people involved and decibels) that I could handle. I returned to Santo Domingo rested and ready to work, something that had been impossible at that point for about two weeks.

And pretty soon it’s time for my own kind of fun, Thanksgiving vacation. After about three failed plans, Andrew and I are going to city of Cajamarca, in the sierra about six hours southeast of his capital city, Chiclayo. Cajamarca is famous for its cheese, wool, and being the historical site of a bloody battle between Pizarro’s army and the Incans (detailed in “Guns, Germs, and Steel”), so the irony of choosing Cajamarca to celebrate a holiday about harmony between European settlers and Native Americans is not lost on me. Nonetheless, I cannot wait.