Saturday, January 28, 2012
Summer Vacation Update
Okay so maybe I haven't stuck to my update a month goal, but allow me to explain.
Much has changed since the last update back in November, however at first there was nothing then there was a lot. Just as I was starting to get my feet under me in the classes, the school year ended. My last classes were around Thanksgiving time, then the week after my Youth Development group had our first In-Service Training. That was a week in the department of Lambayaque, about 4-5 hours from my town in Cajamarca. There we had a week of training sessions and got some field experience helping with some World AIDS Day events. We were scheduled to be there from Sunday and then return the next Saturday, but as it happened there was a huge strike in Cajamarca and so we were stuck there a few extra days (If you care to look it up the strike was over the Yanacocha gold mine (American Owned) that has a big operation in Cajamarca. Basically the mine wants to move water from a few natural lagoons and put into resevoirs that they would build, and the people don't want them too).
Fortunately that cleared up within a few days (the strike that is, the people's objections to the mine haven't gone away) and we got back to our sites. It was nice to be back however I quickly realized that December was going to be a different kind of month. Similar to the States it is much about holidays, however here it was the start of summer vacation so the schools were out sooner and there was really no interest in getting anything new started. So my main objectives for the month were to promote our summer vacation program to any kids I could still find in the schools or the neighborhoods and celebrating at all of the different parties. Each of which I will give a brief description.
Promocion - this is the word used for graduating class, so instead of saying 'Class of 2011,' it's 'Promocion 2011.' Each one has its respective party, kind of like a giant graduation ceremony/party all rolled into one. There are promociones all the way from kindergarden up through the high school, and even some of the supieror education schools too. Since I had worked in the majority of the schools in my town, I got invited to each one's promocion, and even some I didn't work at. So for about a week and a half there was a graduation or two per night for me to attend. The parties involved an announced walk-in for each graduating student and their date (yes even the kindergardeners had dates), gifts from the madrina and padrina of the promocion (godparents), some type of meal (usually guinea pig), and a dance. In Peru there isn't a party without a dance.
Chocolatadas - This was the typical Christmas party for any class, organization, or any other reason you can think of. Everyone gets together and has some paneton (fruitcake) and hot chocolate. I can't quite remember how many I went too, but the most memorable was one with my class of the first grade girls in the high school. They were having a secret santa along with their party and they asked me to participate. So they had the drawing while I was stuck in Lambayaque, and no one told me anything about it until the night before. My host mom informed me that the person I was supposed to give something to was my host dad. I asked her what kinds of things people usually give and she said they just make cards to show friendship...so of course that's what I did. Not wanting to make a card, but feeling better after I did, I showed up to the party with it tucked away in my shirt, assuming everyone must be doing something similar so that others wouldn't see it. However to my great surprise when i got there, everyone had bought presents, even my host mom who had told me not too. So it was pretty great standing up in front of everyone and giving the only non-present, fortunately my host dad understood since he was there when my host mom told me nobody buys presents.
Christmas - Several people have asked me about this one, and the first answer is yes, Peru does celebrate Christmas although as one might expect it does depend on religion and economic status. The large majority of Peru is Catholic, but there are other religions as well. On the economic status thing I was told that the people out in the campo (country) usually don't do anything to celebrate. However for those that do, the typical Christmas celebration all takes place on Christmas Eve (Noche Buena). The day is spent in preparation (in my family's case we were making tamales), then in the evening everyone gets dressed up and goes to mass around 10 or 11, early enough so that they can be done before midnight. Then they go to wherever they are going to be celebrating, which in our case was the house of a family friend. Everyone then waits until midnight then wishes each other a Feliz Navidad and has some wine or champagne. Then they eat turkey and whatever else they have prepared, and dance (told ya) until the early morning. Christmas Day then is used for sleeping. In our case we got home around 3 or 4 AM and then went to an aunt's house on Christmas Day for lunch. Also as a PS on this one, Peru is all about their fruitcake, I have never seen nor have I wanted to see so much fruitcake in my whole life.
So that was about all of my December. For New Year's I got to take a trip to Mancora, a beach on the northern coast of Peru in the department of Piura. The New Year's celebration wasn't much different than that of the U.S. but there are a lot of superstitious things that some people do. One was to wear brand new yellow underwear, another was to eat 12 grapes, and another was to run around the block with a suitcase so that you would travel more in the new year. I ate a few grapes.
From the New Year's trip I came back to site and my site mate and I hit the ground running with our summer vacation programs. Our original plan was to have English class for the Institute students on Monday's and Wednesday's and to have our vacaciones utiles program on Tuesday's and Thursday's. Plans were quickly changed after we showed up that first Monday without a student. We found out that many of those students are doing their internships during the day so we moved the class to evenings and opened it up to any adults. Thus having more free time in the morning we extended the vacaciones utiles program to Monday-Thursday, and Friday as an optional sports day. Both programs have been great successes, we have about 60 kids that come and go in our vacaciones program, and about 20-30 stable adult English students. So far in our vacaciones program we have done classes on nutrition, recycling/hand washing, U.S. sports, drug awareness, and we had a career day with 9 local professionals. We are also getting ready to start teaching English in one of the small towns just outside of San Pablo, the community bank is continuing, and this morning we dragged some sanded down trees around that are going to be used to build a guinea pig farm.
Finally just a few other things of interest.
My host family is currently living in Lima, leaving the house all to me back in San Pablo. With this I started trying to cook for myself, but out of both convenience and their insistence I am now eating with my site mate's family.
The rainy season has hit, and it has hit hard. It is foggy almost all the time, kind of like living inside a cloud. When the rain comes strong the water in the house comes out brown. However we do get a few clear days now and then when the water clears up and it is possible to try clothes.
Carnaval is coming up soon and the biggest celebration in Peru is in Cajamarca. Rumor has it that the big events are water/paint balloon fights. In preparation, for pretty much all of January and February all the kids run around the streets throwing balloons at whoever they want. We got into a strategic battle with the kids from our vacaciones program, and of course we won!
Our cat ran away. Hopefully he comes back so we don't get rats.
Okay that's all I have, look for the next one sometime in March, with the start of the new school year.
Oh and for those of you keeping score at home, the soiled bed count is now at 2!
Much has changed since the last update back in November, however at first there was nothing then there was a lot. Just as I was starting to get my feet under me in the classes, the school year ended. My last classes were around Thanksgiving time, then the week after my Youth Development group had our first In-Service Training. That was a week in the department of Lambayaque, about 4-5 hours from my town in Cajamarca. There we had a week of training sessions and got some field experience helping with some World AIDS Day events. We were scheduled to be there from Sunday and then return the next Saturday, but as it happened there was a huge strike in Cajamarca and so we were stuck there a few extra days (If you care to look it up the strike was over the Yanacocha gold mine (American Owned) that has a big operation in Cajamarca. Basically the mine wants to move water from a few natural lagoons and put into resevoirs that they would build, and the people don't want them too).
Fortunately that cleared up within a few days (the strike that is, the people's objections to the mine haven't gone away) and we got back to our sites. It was nice to be back however I quickly realized that December was going to be a different kind of month. Similar to the States it is much about holidays, however here it was the start of summer vacation so the schools were out sooner and there was really no interest in getting anything new started. So my main objectives for the month were to promote our summer vacation program to any kids I could still find in the schools or the neighborhoods and celebrating at all of the different parties. Each of which I will give a brief description.
Promocion - this is the word used for graduating class, so instead of saying 'Class of 2011,' it's 'Promocion 2011.' Each one has its respective party, kind of like a giant graduation ceremony/party all rolled into one. There are promociones all the way from kindergarden up through the high school, and even some of the supieror education schools too. Since I had worked in the majority of the schools in my town, I got invited to each one's promocion, and even some I didn't work at. So for about a week and a half there was a graduation or two per night for me to attend. The parties involved an announced walk-in for each graduating student and their date (yes even the kindergardeners had dates), gifts from the madrina and padrina of the promocion (godparents), some type of meal (usually guinea pig), and a dance. In Peru there isn't a party without a dance.
Chocolatadas - This was the typical Christmas party for any class, organization, or any other reason you can think of. Everyone gets together and has some paneton (fruitcake) and hot chocolate. I can't quite remember how many I went too, but the most memorable was one with my class of the first grade girls in the high school. They were having a secret santa along with their party and they asked me to participate. So they had the drawing while I was stuck in Lambayaque, and no one told me anything about it until the night before. My host mom informed me that the person I was supposed to give something to was my host dad. I asked her what kinds of things people usually give and she said they just make cards to show friendship...so of course that's what I did. Not wanting to make a card, but feeling better after I did, I showed up to the party with it tucked away in my shirt, assuming everyone must be doing something similar so that others wouldn't see it. However to my great surprise when i got there, everyone had bought presents, even my host mom who had told me not too. So it was pretty great standing up in front of everyone and giving the only non-present, fortunately my host dad understood since he was there when my host mom told me nobody buys presents.
Christmas - Several people have asked me about this one, and the first answer is yes, Peru does celebrate Christmas although as one might expect it does depend on religion and economic status. The large majority of Peru is Catholic, but there are other religions as well. On the economic status thing I was told that the people out in the campo (country) usually don't do anything to celebrate. However for those that do, the typical Christmas celebration all takes place on Christmas Eve (Noche Buena). The day is spent in preparation (in my family's case we were making tamales), then in the evening everyone gets dressed up and goes to mass around 10 or 11, early enough so that they can be done before midnight. Then they go to wherever they are going to be celebrating, which in our case was the house of a family friend. Everyone then waits until midnight then wishes each other a Feliz Navidad and has some wine or champagne. Then they eat turkey and whatever else they have prepared, and dance (told ya) until the early morning. Christmas Day then is used for sleeping. In our case we got home around 3 or 4 AM and then went to an aunt's house on Christmas Day for lunch. Also as a PS on this one, Peru is all about their fruitcake, I have never seen nor have I wanted to see so much fruitcake in my whole life.
So that was about all of my December. For New Year's I got to take a trip to Mancora, a beach on the northern coast of Peru in the department of Piura. The New Year's celebration wasn't much different than that of the U.S. but there are a lot of superstitious things that some people do. One was to wear brand new yellow underwear, another was to eat 12 grapes, and another was to run around the block with a suitcase so that you would travel more in the new year. I ate a few grapes.
From the New Year's trip I came back to site and my site mate and I hit the ground running with our summer vacation programs. Our original plan was to have English class for the Institute students on Monday's and Wednesday's and to have our vacaciones utiles program on Tuesday's and Thursday's. Plans were quickly changed after we showed up that first Monday without a student. We found out that many of those students are doing their internships during the day so we moved the class to evenings and opened it up to any adults. Thus having more free time in the morning we extended the vacaciones utiles program to Monday-Thursday, and Friday as an optional sports day. Both programs have been great successes, we have about 60 kids that come and go in our vacaciones program, and about 20-30 stable adult English students. So far in our vacaciones program we have done classes on nutrition, recycling/hand washing, U.S. sports, drug awareness, and we had a career day with 9 local professionals. We are also getting ready to start teaching English in one of the small towns just outside of San Pablo, the community bank is continuing, and this morning we dragged some sanded down trees around that are going to be used to build a guinea pig farm.
Finally just a few other things of interest.
My host family is currently living in Lima, leaving the house all to me back in San Pablo. With this I started trying to cook for myself, but out of both convenience and their insistence I am now eating with my site mate's family.
The rainy season has hit, and it has hit hard. It is foggy almost all the time, kind of like living inside a cloud. When the rain comes strong the water in the house comes out brown. However we do get a few clear days now and then when the water clears up and it is possible to try clothes.
Carnaval is coming up soon and the biggest celebration in Peru is in Cajamarca. Rumor has it that the big events are water/paint balloon fights. In preparation, for pretty much all of January and February all the kids run around the streets throwing balloons at whoever they want. We got into a strategic battle with the kids from our vacaciones program, and of course we won!
Our cat ran away. Hopefully he comes back so we don't get rats.
Okay that's all I have, look for the next one sometime in March, with the start of the new school year.
Oh and for those of you keeping score at home, the soiled bed count is now at 2!
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