Fiestas Patrias

Perú gained its Independence from Spain on July 28, 1821. The general San Martín fought to help Perú gain its independence and is now remembered every July 28 on Fiestas Patrias. In this day, Peruvians show their national pride by raising the red and white striped Peruvian flag (red for war and white for peace) and getting together with family to show their reverence for those who have made this country so great. It is a very important day of honor for Peruvians. It is a day full of reminiscing, family, friends, oh . . . and of course cerveza! Peruvians love passing the vaso (glass) and a bottle of Cristal (the most widespread national beer) in a big drinking circle with friends, old and new.

Of course my fellow volunteers and I, being the cultural junkies that we are and trying our best to integrate into Peruvian life, took this opportunity to visit a Fiestas Patrias party that one of the host families threw. I showed up at 11 AM to find the beers flowing, the food cooking, the music blaring and dancing in full swing. My friend Adam, whose family threw the party, and a couple of the other volunteers and I helped prepare food and get everything organized. Adam’s mom, Gloria, is an amazing cook and one of the nicest people I’ve met. I’ve been to his house about 10 times and every time she makes sure I am well fed. It was also her birthday so we all wanted to make this day extra special for her by helping out with the cooking and just generally showing her a good time.

While we were all in the kitchen, Adam’s dad, Lucho, called me over for a secret mission. He was going to pick up Gloria’s birthday cakes from a bakery in the next town and asked if I wanted to help. His dad’s awesome and I love spending one-on-one time with Peruvians speaking Spanish so I took him up on the offer and we hopped into his 1987 Camry and sped off.

Because it was a holiday, there was mucha congestión on the road. But luckily, Lucho knew a short cut. He pulled off down a narrow side street, almost collided with a mototaxi (like a rickshaw tricycle thing), and before I knew it we were flying at a breakneck 40 MPH down a dirt road. A few more near collisions later we arrived at the bakery and collected the cakes.

When we got back to the party more volunteers and family members had arrived. I quickly grabbed a plate of food: ceviche (raw fish that is “cooked” in lemon with onions and garlic – it’s REALLY GOOD), a delicious potato dish, chicken and rice (which is like the Peruvian equivalent to pizza or cheeseburgers in the States because they eat it so much here), and yucca. I had just sat down when I saw Lucho walking over to me with a huge grin on his face and two pitchers of some mysterious liquid in his hands. I didn’t need an explanation of what was in the pitchers, Lucho’s grin said it all – he loves getting drunk with the gringos (that’s what they call us white people by the way). He poured me a big glass of the mysterious liquid and explained to me what it was. It was Chicha de Jorra, a drink made with corn and fermented barley that they drink in the mountains. It was delicious and I can’t think of a comparison to it back in the states.

After some eating and a bit more Chicha de Jorras, some of us guys decided that we needed to integrate our group of gringos with the group of Peruvians that was sitting on the other side of the yard. We got up and invited some of the moms and grandmas to dance. I’m a terrible dancer, but so are most Peruvians so I felt right in my element. We danced for a while and then decided to work on some superlatives for our class of volunteers. These consisted of some pretty innocuous ones like, “most likely to learn Quecha,” and “most likely to kiss a Peruvian,” but there were some other more risqué ones like, “most likely to knock up a host sister.” We tried explaining the idea to our Peruvian friends, but they didn’t get the idea at all. I guess we just sucked at translating.

After the superlatives, a couple of people and I decided to share some American culture with our Peruvian hosts. I had shown some of my friends how to make pizza at Adam’s house a few weeks ago and his parents really loved it so we thought we would do it again. We commandeered the kitchen from Gloria, put on our aprons and got to work. We made about six or seven pizzas all from scratch: dough and sauce and all the accoutrements. Vegetables and fruits are really cheap in Perú so we bought lots of avocados (which you can get for about a dollar here), mushrooms, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and anything else we thought would go good on a pizza. We even made a BBQ chicken pizza and a spicy pineapple pizza which were big hits.

After the pizza we sang Happy Birthday and Cumpleaños Feliz to Gloria and devoured the cake. I think Gloria had a really good time which made me really happy because she is always very nice to us and never thinks twice before opening her home to us and filling our bellies. It was a really swell time and a right proper way to celebrate my first Fiestas Patrias. I hope the next two I have here are just as good.

Chau!

Blog Resumption

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I suck at keeping this thing updated. I am having so much fun here and I'm so busy all of the time that it seems like the blog is harder than I thought it would be. But no worries, I am determined to keep all of you curious minds informed about my adventures in Peru. If you have Facebook, make sure to check my profile, because I am better at posting pictures on there than I am about writing in the blog, but I promise to be better at that too.

So I have been in Peru for about a month and a half now. I am in the middle of training which means long and sometimes boring days. Training is in a medium-sized town named Chaclacayo which is about 30 minutes east of Lima, the capital. I live in a nice little house with a host mom, Victoria; a host dad, Santiago; and my host brother, Felipe, who is my age. It's a pretty sweet set-up because I get hot water, which is a rare luxury in Peru.

Every weekday I wake up at about 6:30 and eat breakfast with the family. Then I go to the training center around 8 and have 4 hours of language class. The language class is actually really fun and we mostly just sit around and discuss important matters like the Peruvian gossip column. Then we have lunch. My host mom packs me a lunch everyday and it's always AWESOME! Peruvian cuisine rocks so much! It usually has a lot of potatoes (Peru has over 2,000 kinds of potato) and rice, but that's cool because I love those things. Then after lunch we have technical training which, because I am a youth volunteer, often consists of us visiting a school and teaching the kids about hygiene, nutrition, self-esteem, community involvement, or sometimes just playing games or chatting.

That was my first 5 weeks of training. It started to get pretty boring, but there were always fun experiences tossed in there. I got to take part in a religious parade and carry a huge alter that was impossibly heavy. I got chased by toro locos (see the previous blog post for a description of this fantastic creature). And of course I've played my share of futbol.

Luckily, the monotony was broken up in week 6 when everyone took a week long trip to various sites in Peru. We broke up into groups of 10 or so and each group went to a different departamento (like a state in the US). My group went to Lambayeque, which is about 14 hours north of Lima by bus and lies on the coast. It was an amazing experience. I finally got to see some sites that volunteers work in and in which I may potentially be placed. After this trip I felt really confident to start my service.

Well that's about it for now. I just wanted to type out a quick general summary of what's going on here so you all know that I'm still alive. I'll try to update this thing a couple of times a week from now on with some more specific and fun stories.

Chau!