La Lluvia!!!

So….I’m wearing a head lamp. Yes, I know it has been over a month now since I last posted anything, but a lot has been going on. If you couldn’t tell from my comment about the head lamp, our power went out today. We have been without electricity, internet, lights, and refrigeration since sometime in the middle of Tuesday night. So I am taking this time of quietness, stillness, and darkness to just reflect on what has been going on the past month, and honestly, there is a lot to catch you all up on.

Sunset from the Obispado

We moved out of our host families’ houses on March 2^nd, about a week and a half ago. The month with them as a whole was very helpful and a nice transition into life here. Tina, my host mom, was always working around the house and put everyone before herself. Her kids were great too. My last couple days with them were spent playing monkey in the middle with Laura in the rain and asking Juan Carlos to sing to me over and over again…that kid will make up the sweetest song about just about anything you tell him to. They absolutely loved being twirled around or me holding them upside-down. I also got really close with my host cousin, Claudia. We watched “Rojo Fama Contrafama” together which is a Peruvian singing and dancing competition TV show, and she loved that I picked up the phrase “Que Aaaaaasco!” (how disgusting!) from a telenovela they liked to watch. Now we just say that all the time to each other haha. She wants to go to Disneyland next year for her 15^th birthday, so Mom and Dad, I already invited her to stay at our house when she comes to visit…hope that’s okay! But in all honesty, I really had fun getting to know them better. There were some rough points, like having to take bucket showers for 3 out of the 4 weeks I lived there, or just feeling like I wasn’t really doing anything productive. But in the end, it was a great experience living with a host family and being able to learn first-hand about how to cook papas huancayina and Peruvian spaghetti, make mango juice, wash clothes by hand (okay, that part wasn’t actually that fun!), and dance to some of the popular songs. 

 

Now we are on our own to just kinda figure things out! It has been fun, and Lacie, Britt and I make a pretty good team. When we moved into our house, it was still being painted and the roof had quite a few leaks in it, even after it had supposedly been fixed already. So, our first week at our new house consisted of us trying to get settled and unpack, having to coordinate when we would be home so the workers could finish our house, Britt starting to teach English at Santísima Cruz and Lacie starting to teach computers at CEO Betania, and planning the spring break trip for and showing around our first school group from the U.S. YES! HECTIC!!!

26 Villanova students and a few faculty were here last week for their spring break trip. Half of the students were here as a mission/immersion trip, and half were nursing students who were here to do home visits and hold health seminars in the different parish zones about diabetes, sun protection and the environment, hypertension, and self-esteem. I helped plan the mission/immersion part of the trip and assumed that I would be helping out with that group, but on the first day I was told that I would be the translator for one of the small groups of nurses doing home visits. I was nervous about having to explain patients’ health problems in Spanish, and almost told them I couldn’t, but I decided to embrace my inner Peruvian and just go with the flow. Looking back now, I am so happy I did! Going on the home visits, interacting with the patients and hearing their stories, practicing my Spanish health terms, and seeing the nursing students impacted by their experiences really re-awakened me as to why I am here doing service and why I want to go into the health field when I get back. It was also just fun being pretty nerdy and talking about science and health with the nurses and nursing students! With help from Birtt and Lacie I was able to split my time between the two groups of students and it all went really well.

Britt's in uniform and all ready for her first day at school!!
Lacie's getting ready for her first computer class and I'm getting ready to meet up with the nursing students!

Since Villanova left and our house is done being worked on, it has settled down a bit. We were able to unpack, clean the house, decorate by putting pictures on our walls, make our first trip to the market as a community, and sweep our dirt in the courtyard…yes Peruvians sweep the dirt in their yards. I tried it and it looks great! As a community we were all very pleased with the cleanliness of our dirt. We have noticed some visitors lately, too. We have baby kittens!!! We walked into our backyard one day last week and there were just 2 tiny kittens near our sinks to wash our clothes. They had to have been only days old, but now they are starting to walk around a bit and are getting use to us. The mama kitty trusts us now too and even comes to feed them when we are outside with them. We are working on names. TBD. We also have A LOT of cololos!!! Yes, frogs are everywhere, especially when it rains. There are always one or two that are just in the house. Speaking of rain, it is pouring right now!! It didn’t rain all of February and people were getting very worried that they weren’t going to get enough rain this year for crops. Well, lucky for them, it rained quite a bit last week and is really pouring now. UN-lucky for us, we have realized that the plastic they put on top of our roof to try to “fix” the leaks for the second time now, did not hold up. We have a lake in our entrance room…which is why I say “entrance” room, because it can’t actually be used as a living room since we have to keep moving our couches out of it to keep them from getting soaked! 

Our first AV meal together in our new house. Chicken and beef heart stir fry...naturally!

Me removing our frog friend from the bathroom and showing Britt

Kittens!!!!

Another funny thing about the rain…Chulucanas has absolutely no drainage. And the one tunnel that all the water from the city runs to is right around the corner from our house. So, whenever it rains a lot, rivers form in all the streets around our house…among other low areas of the city. Most sidewalks and houses here are built about 3 feet higher than the street so that when it rains rivers may form in the streets, but the houses are less likely to flood. So last week when it rained, we had heard about the rain but had yet to realize the severity of it haha. Our moto driver literally told us, “No, there’s no way I am going down that street to your house. You girls can get out here and walk.” So we did, but we couldn’t even cross the street to get to our house! Our neighbors invited us into there house to take refuge for a little while, but it didn’t let up, so we finally crossed the river in the street, feeling dirt and bugs going by us in the current, and having to search for where the 3 foot high sidewalk was that we needed to step up onto, because the water had even risen above that! It was quite a scene.

Well this happened again tonight. Today was my third day at work and we left a little early tonight because it started raining so much. By the time I got home, though, there was already a river in our street. Moto driver refused, once again, to take me to my house, so I got out and walked. I waded across the street through water that was up to my thighs, climbed up onto the sidewalk, and got into the house. But like I said earlier, we haven’t had power all day, so this time it was pitch black outside as I waded across the river, and there were no lights on in the house as I walked inside. I was, however, welcomed by Lacie and Britt wearing their headlamps! So I went and put mine on (Thanks, Mom!!!), we cooked dinner  by the light of our headlamps and without any electricity, and now I am about to fall asleep to the sound of pouring rain hitting our metal sheets of a roof and leaking water falling into the bowls we have out to try to catch them. This is my life in Chulucanas, Peru, and I could not be any happier to be here.

  

Once again, another long post, but I hope I caught you all up on what we have been up to here, and I will write again sooner this time!  Happy Birthday to my Mom! Love you and miss you!!

 Ciao!

P.S. I wrote this last night and our power finally came back on this morning so I can post it! Yay for electricity!!