Actividades del Verano

Hello everyone! Seems like the days just slip by with the various tasks, events, visits, etc. of life here. Did I write a while back that I was feeling that I didn´t have enough to do? :) Below I attempt to catch you up on some highlights of the past month or so.

Beach Trip 1: Caleta Colorada
On January 20 the Huanca family invited me to go to the beach with them and Sebastian, a former volunteer here from Germany who was housed with the Huancas during his stay and now dates one of the four daughters. I have met and gotten to know each of the daughters in some way, largely through our English classes, and they had me to their home for New Year´s Eve. Also, Sebastian, Mariela and Milagros were a part of the running group that has been suspended of late due to various causes, including Roger enrolling in the Police Academy and Sebastian/Mariela leaving for Germany. I have still run a couple times recently with Milagros and her uncle. Any, back to the beach (see photos through link at right) -- we got a late start (not too surprising) due to their participation in a Baptism/fiesta until 4:00 am that morning. Nonetheless, we had completed the 30-minute taxi ride and the 15 minute boat ride and were seated on the sand (along with a ton of other people) by 1:30 in the afternoon. The beach is small, with very small waves, but the water temperature was pleasant. Few people here know how to swim, however, so I was among a handful of others who braved the deeper water. I think with little access to pools and lakes, knowing how to swim is the exception and something I take for granted (thanks Mom for the lessons, even given all the chlorine in my eyes!). After a swim, we broke out the lunch -- a pot of noodles and chicken. People don´t really do sandwiches here much, not sure why, but usually bring a pot of food and serve plates of food. Maybe because they don´t have peanut butter and few choices of lunch meat. The result is a quite nice lunch even at the beach. The trip home took a little longer since we had to take a combination of two ´combis´, or small minibuses, but a refreshing day overall.

Beach trip 2: English Class Field trip to Casma, Sechen, Tortugas and Visique
The week of January 20-26 was largely spent in wrapping up our English class first term, preparing for our trip to Lima, and also included my first appearance during Mass with our choir, Trovadores del Evangelio Vivo (Troubadors of the Living Gospel). I enjoyed it, was quite hot under our poncho uniforms, and didn´t do too much damage, I believe. Anyway, again I get sidetracked: back to the beach. We had planned for some time to take a field trip with our English class students at the end of the first three-month cycle, and the choice was to visit some pre-Inca ruins (Sechen) near Casma (an hour south), and then stop at the beach for the afternoon on the way home (see photo album). A few folks canceled at the last moment, but we still had 10 of us for the trip, including a US med-student named Laura and her friend Robert, both living and volunteering at the neighboring parish of Perpetua Socorro (Laura is helping at the hospice and has gotten to know Emily and Nicole). The ruins were simple, ancient, and partially excavated -- with a simple museum attached. Afterward we stopped to stroll a bit at the resort beach/bay of Tortugas, with placid water and rocky beach, and then hit the beach at Visique, which provided some decent waves for a bit of bodysurfing, a mix of clouds and sun, chance for volleyball, and some beautiful scenery when we walked away from the parking area to an uncrowded section -- with some impressive waves. We returned home -- our friend Elmer had arranged for his uncle to provide personal transportation in a combi -- tired and refreshed, with a few hours to eat, pack, wash, and prepare for the Lima trip. Not having anyone who made a pot of food for this excursion, we had to get by on some fruit and yogurt purchased at the market and some cucumber/hummus sandwiches that I brought along. They were a bit suspicious of the garbanzo bean paste that I´d made, but gave it a try and liked it (plus they were quite hungry).

Overview of the two weeks in Lima, January 27 - February 9
As expected, I arrived in Lima early Sunday morning quite tired and groggy, after a night spent on the rather warm bus on its way from Chimbote. Everyone arrived ontime, especially since the bus left nearly an hour late. The general mood was of high spirits as we gathered, a couple parents were concerned about letting their kids go, since they had never been away from home by themselves. I assured them that I would watch out for their safety and that we would stay together as a group. Some details about our experience together:
- We stayed, through the generosity of the Incarnate Word Sisters, in two houses in the neighborhood Magdalena del Mar in Lima -- the five girls in one (where we cooked and ate breakfast/dinner) and the eight guys in another, a couple blocks away and near a huge church called the Cupula. Two girls were already in Lima staying with relatives, and joined us for the courses and lunch each day. We shopped at the local market and cooked for the Sunday lunches both morning and evening meals. During the weekdays while attending the courses, we ate at a restaurant near the school, cheap by US standards: $1.50 per person for a full meal of soup, drink, and main dish. Many restaurants serve what they call a ´Menú´ -- a couple choices for appetizer/soup and three for the main dish. Hence, I was able to sample a number of Peruvian dishes during our time. Our daily schedule:
6:00-7:00 am -- wake up (I ran the 10 blocks to the ocean, where I ran along the cliff overlooking the sea)
7:30-8:00 am -- breakfast crew makes the food (often bread and oatmeal drink, which they call ´Quaker´ -- good marketing my our Pennsylvanian friends). Also, we attempt to hurry the stragglers from the guys´ house over to the women´s.
8:00-8:45 -- breakfast, dishes, clean-up
8:45 -- walk the 20 minutes to the school for the courses
9:00-12:30 -- morning courses
12:30-3:00 -- lunch and rest (at the park or back on school grounds)
3:00-6:30 -- afternoon courses
7:15-10:00 -- dinner crew cooks (bread and Quaker, or maybe eggs/rice, or arroz con leche), others hang out, rest, play guitar. After dinner, conversation, dishes, play cards, etc.
10:00 -- Guys return home to prepare for bed, often they play cards for another hour. Todd is quite sleepy from the early rising and speaking/hearing Spanish all day long, and so goes straight to bed.

As far as money goes, we spent a total of $81 per person for the two week experience -- and thanks to the support of the parish, the IW Sisters, and some of you reading right now the trip was made possible. The young people in attendance -- to which I showed photos of all the people who supported the experience -- were quite grateful. At multiple moments, they strongly reminded each other that we were not here just for paseo or even just to have a good experience for ourselves, but that people we don´t even know from the US are paying our way in hopes that we will use what we have learned to aid our parish when we return home. Such hopes are beginning to be realized now as we hold our second meeting tonight to lay out the initiatives that we will undertake in order to reach out to more youth that live in our parish.

Living with Peruvian Young People
As a few of the young people expressed themselves this past Saturday at a follow-up meeting with the group, we all learned as much from the experience of living with each other and meeting new friends during the courses as we did from the course content itself. Of course, this was one of my hopes in undertaking the project, and I´d like to share a few things that struck me during our two weeks together:
1. The variety of ages (14-34) was at times a test of patience for the older participants, but in the end emerged a sense of family that is different than with same-age groups of youth. Also, I felt much less worry personally in terms of supervision, as most participants were at a level of maturity to handle tasks and take initiative on their own. I do believe as well that the life experience of the young adults had a very positive influence on the teenage members of the group.
2. Whereas some US youth (especially guys) have not much experience in doing their laundry, our whole group is very accustomed to washing their own clothes by hand, doing so during the mornings before breakfast or, as I did, washing on Sunday morning, our day off, and hanging the clothes on the line.
3. They are not accustomed to eating many sweets or junk food at all, whereas youth events in the US are almost not complete without cookies and potato chips. In general, I felt we didn´t eat that much -- and I occasionally had to supplement my diet with some peanuts from the corner store :).
4. Few young people have what I would call a ´hurry mode.´ If they get started a bit late in getting dressed and ready for the day, the pace of preparation doesn´t change -- they will just be late. If the start of breakfast is delayed for whatever reason, they are perfectly capable of sitting down to a leisurely breakfast as if we had all the time in the world (while I am looking at the clock and fretting). Then, all of a sudden someone says ´Vamos´(let´s go) and the focused action of dishes and cleaning the floor begins. Usually we arrived in time (if not on time) for the courses, but I still struggle to get used to this aspect of the culture here. Somewhere a happy medium between being relaxed and uptight about schedules should exist.
5. Young people here love music and dancing. Guitar and singing was often a part of break times, and we closed the Saturday evening concert provided at the courses (of three Catholic groups/artists) by dancing to some high energy Christian cumbia. At Consuelo´s 16th birthday party on the 7th, at her aunt´s house in Lima where she was staying, of course there was salsa dancing.
6. Some members of our group are as addicted to their cell phones (which often have the capacity to play music) as youth in the US -- though others of our group would give them a hard time about it.
7. Many of the group had not spent much time at all away from home, and they very much enjoyed the opportunity to meet other young people from Lima, Cuzco, Piura,etc.


Miscellaneous News from Chimbote
- Our registrations and attendance for the new term of our English course is definitely on the rise. We had 15+ people at our house for conversation practice on Friday evening and over 20 for class last night. We have abandoned the idea of keeping up a website (took lots of time and few seemed to use it), but have divided the lessons into basic English (Mondays) and intermediate (Thursdays). For beginners coming on Thursday (and advanced on Monday), we separate the group and do reading, pronunciation, comprehension and vocab.
- I helped our choir provide the dinámicas (songs with actions) and group games for a parish family day/open-house at a new retreat center on the edge of town. It has a nice building with rooms for workshops and groups, grass, a soccer/volleyball court, and an eating pavilion. I became tired from being there from 8:30 am until 6:00, including singing in the joint choir for the closing outdoor Mass, and got sunburnt by the strong sun. Singing with our choir afterward at the 7:30 mass finished off a long day, but with some beautiful moments, such as walking back from Santo Domingo (the neighborhood of the retreat center) in the evening sun, seeing the crowd winding through the dirt streets and simple houses, the cross-topped mountain silhouetted in the background, and a group of us singing to a guitar that one of the choir members was playing. I didn´t have my camera with me, but the memory of the moment will stay a while.

Well, I appreciate your perseverance in staying with this entry all the way to the end. I wish you a blessed week!