June 13th and we lose a Musketeer

Today Nicole is leaving, which is crazy. Even though we've actually only known each other for a little over a week, when you spend twenty four hours a day together you still get to know them really well. She's spunky and confident and always stands up for what she wants which we all rely on now whenever we go out anywhere. She's feeling terrible though and her grandma and mom have been researching webMD and have come to all kinds of ghastly conclusions and want her home ASAP. It was so hard to say goodbye but we're already planning a reunion!

Joyce teaches us the basics of ballet

I woke up feeling refreshed from the weekend, but my morning job at Gunter Grass was meh. Eleonora is gone! Which is so sad. In her place a teacher called Jacky has just returned after having a baby. However she only had one class this morning and it wasn't until 11 so I said that I might be able to help out in a math class. The math class turned out to be more of a lecture and I was no help. It was pretty interesting though as the class was geometry, but because no one has a calculator in the school they don't use SOH CAH TOA and instead find everything out by drawing different shapes and moving angles around. It can get very complicated! The last class I had was an English lesson with the talkative, late thirties Jacky and I finally thought I could be useful. However instead of being able to help with pronunciation she put on CD which had another American say the words. I didn't mind too much but I spent the entire day feeling entirely useless. I even considered switching jobs.

In the afternoon I went to INABIF and spent a lot of my time teaching English and playing chess. While playing with one kid, if he started to lose he would make up rules that he would assure me is 'how they play in Peru' such as that the pawn can move sideways or the horse diagonally. Or that in Check you can't move any piece on the board except your king! However at the end he told me I was a real expert and offered me his chess set which was so touching! I told him he should keep it so he could practice and work up to beating me.

When we returned home Alison didn't feel well and went to sleep, while a miscommunication with Rudy meant that Joyce didn't have a Spanish lesson when she thought she did. There have been a lot of miscommunications lately. When Nicole was leaving, Rudy thought Joyce was Nicole and told her he would take her to the airport for her 5 o'clock flight. He then banged on the door at 5 am, waking them all up even though the flight was at 5 pm - and waking them up at 5am would have been too late to catch a 5am flight anyway!

After a dinner of bread Joyce and I went back up to my room. Things had gotten a lot worse for Alison. She had a fever and was super nauseous. She said it felt like food poisoning. Joyce said she had had the same thing a few days ago and had spent the next day throwing up at least six times. Yikes! Also none of the family had noticed she was sick which kind of sucked. I went and got Merilyn who went and got Rudy who went and got some antibiotics and Gatorade which was nice of him. After a long call to Alison's drug developer mom Alison decided to take Cipro. By this point I was starting to feel like Alison, only I was only a few hours behind so I took Cipro too in the hopes of being better tomorrow.

June 12

Again we woke up far, far too soon, this time to the pop pop popping sound of fireworks at six am. It's a common sound here, I think that people here are just perpetually partying but I also read somewhere that in the favellas of Brazil, gangs use fireworks to warn members about an oncoming police raid, so I really hope it's not that. By 9:20 all four volunteers were at the plaza ready to go on a tour into the countryside.

Alison, Joyce, and me

On our way there we saw yet another parade in the plaza, there must be one a day if not more here! The van that took us was small and the driver was crazy. He almost got us into a crash when he tried to overtake on a corner and another car came around it, but luckily there was room for three cars side by side. Yikes! It was cool to see what the country looked like outside the city. Ayacucho is nestled in high, dry, Sierra mountains that are covered in brown grass and huge cactii. The tour guide explained how most of this mountainous land was controlled by the infamous Shinning Path gang group, and brutally so. Uncooperative police officers could have their tongues cut out, be tortured and then killed. Even now it's not a good idea to go roaming through the countryside at night.

A giant stone used for animal sacrifices

A tree they call the little fat girl! Also a hallucinogen

Each notch in this religious building was a shrine to a god

The mausoleum where people were buried in the fetal position

We then arrived at the Wari ruins. The Wari were the first people to successfully survive in this harsh landscape, and their empire not only survived but thrived, with the ruins showing a capital city of 20,000 inhabitants, a complicated belief system involving animal sacrifices, and a mausoleum four stories deep where the most important people like the King would be buried with human sacrifices. The Wari were also masters of stone work which helped them move around the all too precious water. In contrast the hills were so rich in precious metals that they were considered no more precious than scarce wood. Nicole started feeling really bad almost at the start of the tour and went back to the bus. Joyce, Alison and I were still in the ruins when the bus was supposed to leave and had to sprint back to make it. It is really hard to run at 10,000 feet!

The Wari were such masters at stone work they could cut stone beads just a centimeter across

Hello creepy skeleton

The second stop was the small artisan village of Quinoa, and it was very quaint and touristy. Then we went up, up, up this mountain to the site of an old battle between Peruvian Patriots and Loyalists who were loyal to the Spanish crown, who had conquered Peru for themselves centuries ago. The 1842 battle pitted brother against brother with the patriots winning a decisive victory. We had a low point though when we realized the 'lunch' was just a row of street food vendors, something that foreigners definitely can't eat for fear of food poisoning. We ended up eating one granola bar between four of us which was slim pickings.

The artisan village of Quinoa

The obelisk, weirdly gigantic in the isolated countryside

Peaceful enough to do yoga. On a hike by the Obelisk.

After our return to Ayacucho we went to get dinner with a girl we'd met on the bus. Her name is Ava and she's 25, she had just quit her job to travel through South America for six months. Wow, that's the dream life! She told us in Bolivia she had biked death road which was really impressive. And in Cusco she had been in taxi that had run over a local girl! Luckily she seemed okay when the taxi driver took her to the hospital. We were shocked, there have been many close calls here on the streets but to hear that things like this actually happen are terrifying! We also talked a lot about running as she is a seven time half marathon and a marathon finisher! Wow impressive! It's also impressive to be traveling by yourself here!

Dinner with Ava, Alison, Nicole, Joyce, and me. Yay girls!

At dinner things did not improve for Nicole and she called her parents. She had been feeling sick for her entire two weeks stay, and this was the final straw. Her parents booked her a flight to go home the next day so she could see a doctor. We were all shocked and saddened, she had originally planned to stay a whole week longer, but she was pretty sick.
After dinner we went to a market in Ayacucho that sprung up in an old disused prison, with every cell now a different store! I bought a new bag that I really liked!

The ex-carcel market

My newly acquired bag!

Another parade

Definitely should NOT be driving!

We also saw yet another parade. Then we said goodbye to Ava and returned home exhausted, but the best kind of exhausted.

This mountain was considered a god, or apu, by the Wari

June 11 and we really need to get some more sleep

After almost no sleep we were awoken by my least favorite animal - the rooster - after only a mere five hours of sleep! We were so tired, but I had arranged to meet my English teacher from the school I work at, Gunter Grass, at the plaza to do yoga together. Apparently she's a yoga teacher! We were of course late and by the time the meeting time of ten o'clock rolled around we were still in the mottotaxi on our way there. We then went for our first run here in Peru as we sprinted through the three block no mottotaxi zone around the plaza and got to the restaurant at 10:15. Eleonora wasn't there and we were mortified that she might have thought we weren't coming! We stood outside for five minutes with our heads in our hands, then she came running down the other street! We were so relieved! Yay for mutual lateness! Then she took us to the rented apartment of her 18 year old brother and his kid. I said I couldn't imagine being a mother at my age, and she said her either (she's in her thirties). She also has seven other siblings which is impressive. Families here are a lot larger, especially the poorer ones.

Yoga

The yoga was intense. Eleonora trained as a yoga instructor in a yoga school in Cusco. At the school they did yoga from 3 am to 9 pm at night for an entire month, with only thirty minute breaks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The yoga class today was two hours long and by the end my legs were jello. It was also a big day for Eleonora as she was recovering from a terrible sickness in which both of her legs mysteriously became covered in bruises and were super painful, and she lost over 35 pounds. No doctor could determine what it was and after a month she eventually got better on her own. This was the first day she had returned to practice yoga.

After the yoga we went back to the house for lunch and then we went out to meet Katia in the plaza at 2:30 to help her volunteer at a youth center in the upper regions of Ayacucho. We had to take a bus to get there and it was a pretty scary ride!

The bus ride

The bus was packed and I was so tall compared to most people in Peru that I couldn't even see out of the windows when I stood up. The average height here is 5'4''!

The sprawling city

Ayacucho from high up

The kids at the youth center

The kids at the youth center were putting on a play that would be performed in a festival with four other centers in July. The play is an Incan take on Hanzel and Gretel. The Incan Sun God, Inti, and his two children go down to Mother Earth (Pachamama) and are trapped in a house made of food by a witch wanting revenge on Inti. The children escape with the help of the Sierra animals the condor (the messenger to Inti), the fox and the skunk, before they escape back to the sky.

The sunset

After another harrowing bus ride back down, Katia took us to her mother-in-law's restaurant where we got to meet her husband Uziel, and her adorable niece and nephew Valeria and Valentino.

Katia and Uziel

Katia and Uziel are such a cute couple, she's so energetic and bubbly and he's so calm and cool, they balance each other out very well. Also on our way to the restaurant Katia saw someone she knew outside a church. He was playing accompaniment for a wedding and even let us play the piano in the church!

Eleonora had also invited us to dinner and so after eating a little bit at Katia's we ran to meet Eleonora in the plaza. It's almost like we have divorced parents that are fighting over custody. Which isn't a bad thing :). Eleonora and her friends took us to a cool small restaurant/bar. Her friends are all in their thirties but we all got along really well. Besides us there were two guys, George and Luis. Luis said he was a soccer player and I asked what he thought about Peru's chances in the Copa America as they were facing off against Brazil next. He said he didn't think they were good. We told him to have faith but he said there was a difference between faith and reality. Peru later went on to win! After yet another late night we returned home after 11 and collapsed. We really need to get some more sleep!

We found this huge bear which was the same color as Alison's top

Alison has been getting a lot of bug bites on her ankles!

Bug bites

June 10

Today was a long, long Friday. Friday's are always long but today surpassed them all. We woke up at 6:30 and headed out for work. We have yet to not arrive to work late, and we didn't make it today either. It's getting really bad. Today the third graders were learning the names of English fruit by making a fruit salad. We helped them peel, cut and mix the fruit. I was a little nervous at first because the eight year old kids were using these giant knives, but they seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly. I cut one of the pieces of banana into a star and Carlos spent the rest of the time trying to make another one with little success. Poor kid! At the end we all enjoyed our fruit and germs together. There are a lot more types of fruit here than in the US. Some like Maracuya and fruit that grows on cactii are very sour and full of giant seeds. Others like the orange bananas and grapes with seeds are almost normal, my favorite fruit apples are terrible here though! Tiny and mushy!

Alison braves an orange banana?!

Fruit salad!

By the time we finally got done with the salad, cleaned everything up, and helped one girl who did manage to cut her finger and another who had a blood nose it was already 1:45 and our work at INABIF starts at 2. With nothing else to eat we had to take a mottotaxi straight there. The kids were awesome as usual and me and ten year old Alex created a drawing where we would each add something new to it in turns. It ended up looking hilarious! I said it looked like an alien and he told me that he had actually seen aliens, apparently he'd seen some late one night on the street and they had strange circular heads. I didn't know what to say.
We were hungry but we stayed an hour and a half later anyway to help one of the workers cut out paper letters. Even though it was a hard for us it took a lot off her plate. By the time we walked home it was six and it had been almost 12 hours since we left the house. But just before going in we met Nicole on the street who said that there was a neighborhood party down in the community's plaza. We decided to go check it out and ran in to quickly change before heading down with the family's cook Merilyn. She lived in a tiny two room shack on the roof with her two young kids. One room is the living room and the other is the bathroom. She left her abusive husband and it is now just the three of them, but she also has two kids in college.

Neils

This is the bedroom/kitchen/living room and the little boy is Neils. He is the sweetest kid I have ever met and we often play soccer with him up on the roof. The cook then offered to go with us to the block party and we agreed. It was the block party to end all block parties. It was a huge concert but not for pop music or anything but traditional Peruvian music! The lead singer even came down from the stage and took a picture with me! It was one of the most unexpected and wonderful events that I've ever been to!

The lead singer!

Marilyn met up with some friends of hers who were all twenty something college students and they taught us to dance traditional Peruvian dances to the music. We started holding hands in a big circle but then also danced with a partner. There's a lot of hopping and kicking your foot in the middle, it was incredible! And to finish off a wonderful night, as all of the 33 cathedrals struck midnight a giant framework of fireworks exploded ten feet from us and they were setting off fireworks into the sky even closer!

We got home a little after one, and on the way back we were followed by some pretty scary drunkards who kept insisting they wanted to dance with us and clapping. We had both Merilyn and one of her friends, Luis, escort us though so we felt relatively safe but it just goes to show how careful you need to be here, especially because we stand out so much.
When we got home we collapsed into bed only to spot a MASSIVE spider on one of our walls, both Alison and I ran out screaming. She's very afraid of them and I'm okay with them up to a certain size but this definitely surpassed that size! We ran and got the bravest one of us all Nicole and she came up to our room.
She tried to flick the spider outside through the door but then the worst case scenario happened. It not only did not go out the door but we couldn't find it in our room! After ten minutes of terrified searching we evacuated to the living room and slept on the couches. Nicole joined us as Joyce had been feeling awful all day and throwing up. It's such a bummer to get sick out here we all hope she gets better soon! At three o'clock we FINALLY got to sleep after the longest day ever!

Evacuation!

June 9

I had the best day at work today! I helped teach kids who were 16 and 17 and they were at a level where it was really beneficial to have someone understand English well. It was hard though because I can only tell them what sounds right without actually being able to dictate the exact rule. For instance Eleonora (the teacher I assist) thought that you should say "I have mustache" but I was pretty sure it was "I have a mustache" but I couldn't tell her why!
The kids in the older class. It's hard to get someone to respect you as a teacher when you're their age.
We play volleyball with the kids during breaks. All the girls here play volleyball and all the boys soccer. While we were playing there was a group of younger girls who would deliberately place themselves in danger of getting hit by the ball just so that when the ball came towards them they could run away screaming, only to come right back. So cute!

Playing volleyball!

Alison being mob hugged

The kids try to reach Alison to roll her rs with no success

After lunch at home, me and Alison went to INABIF and we made the mistake of showing one of the kids the snapchat filters on our phone and before we knew it we had mobs of kids following us around asking for our phones and if we gave in the phone would be consumed in a sea of eager hands and curious faces.

I show Alex the "dog" snapchat filter!

They all think it's hilarious, and even the adults find it funny when then kids make them try it! It's funny the things I take for granted that are so fascinating here like having an iPhone, but it's also interesting the things that they take for granted that I find fascinating, like how everyone here is obsessed with relationships! I was talking to two of the adults today, and they kept asking if I had a boyfriend and trying to set me up with the receptionist, a guy about my age. People here are obsessed with relationships, almost everyone has a significant other and they are always talking about their boyfriend or girlfriend and love in general. It's also a very loving culture with a lot of kissing and hugging and hand holding among even older friends. It makes the whole community seem connected and everyone is always so happy to see each other, it's my favorite thing about the Peruvian culture.

Eating Chifa!

For dinner the four volunteers, Nicole, Joyce, Alison and I decided to be adventurous and try chifa, the Peruvian shortening for Chinese food. Chifa sounds similar to the Chinese for eat food (chifan). We sat down at a restaurant and ordered, and the waitresses were mysteriously fascinated by us, even taking pictures of us from across the restaurant. Had they never had a Chinese person (Joyce whose Chinese Canadian) eat their food before? Had no one asked for chopsticks before? Had they drugged the food and were eagerly waiting for a reaction? Then we discovered it couldn't be the first one because there was a Chinese chef. He was the first Chinese person we'd seen in Ayacucho besides Joyce, there is really almost zero diversity in this city.

As we all struggled to finish out gigantic meals, we were all in a giddy mood after a long day of work and even joked that maybe they had drugged the food! We were in such a good mood that we skipped through the plaza to another restaurant to get dessert and then another for tea and then another for wifi, I've never been to so many restaurants before in one day! We all went home happy and tired!

PPK wins the election with a margin of 50.18 to 49.92! To celebrate there was a parade in the plaza with this giant chipmunk. So random.

Alison and I find an old piano in the house from the mid 1800s. It even has candlestick holders! It also sounds like it hasn't been played since then and Rudy told us his brother bought it from someone who brought it into market in a donkey cart from where it was abandoned on a country road.