January 8, 2008- I couldn´t make this up if I tried

It is summer time in Peru, which is not nearly as exciting in my region as it would be in the States. Summer in Cajamarca brings rainy season, and right now we are averaging 8 hours of robust rainfall per day. My daily attire has developed into black thermal stretch pants tucked into bulky rain boots, and multiple sweaters layered under a loose black raincoat. Summertime and the living´s….not easy as much as it is ridiculous! The other day a Peruvian asked me if someone I knew had died, since I was wearing so much black. I´m sorry, I didn´t realize that style mattered in rural Peru when every time I leave the house I am forced to wade through countless inches of mud, animal feces, and rainwater. Next time I will consider my color choices, I suppose. The only pleasant thing that comes with summer here is the end of classes. We ended classes on December 17th and they not scheduled to start again until March 3. This gives me approximately three months to strategize ways to more effectively domesticate naughty Peruvian mutants that so shamelessly populate my classes.

I really wish I was exaggerating their cruel nature, but unfortunately, I have a friend working on a project with me at my site who can attest to how horrifically the kids here behave. You would never suspect that my small and quaint community serves as a breeding ground for such ghastly creatures. They are so badly behaved that they overshadow any academically-dedicated students that may or may not exist in my classes. I offer you the below anecdote to not only illustrate my above point, but also to show how the professionals hired to teach these kids are just perpetuating how shockingly they conduct themselves.

For the last ¾ of the academic year, I have been doing a vocational orientation course with the two oldest classes in the colegio (secondary school). My main goal for this ongoing capacitation was to introduce more career and educational options to students who were previously very closed-minded about what they could do after high school. After interacting with the kids during the preliminary stages of the program, it was clear that we (my friend and I) had to start at a very rudimentary level with these kids since they apparently were having trouble grasping concepts as simple as respect and responsibility. We hoped to end the year with a panel of professional speakers, but considering these kids could not stop whistling at us or throwing things across the classroom for a mere five minutes, there was no way we could even think about bringing anyone else into this chaos. We started at the most basic level we could think of, and noticed that the class was much more controlled when the professors accompanied us. We preferred their presence anyway because in order for this course to be sustainable, the teachers have to be learning from us as well. However, after the first two classes, the professors vanished into thin air, even though they were being paid to be with us for that hour. We had a meeting with them and insisted that they be there at least for our last class, the culmination of all of our work. For this class, we finally felt confident enough to bring in a speaker from the closest city. Both the director of the school and the professors agreed to be there for the event. Getting a guest speaker is no easy task in Peru. Very few people have private cars, and the transportation we use is very unreliable. In addition to that, people do not get paid by their employers for being school guests, so not many people feel motivated to do so since the majority of them cannot afford to. To ensure that our guest would show up, we agreed to pay him for two full work days.
We decided to invite a mechanic to talk with the kids. More of our students are males, and most of them are interested in being mechanics and civil engineers. Both the kids and the professors seemed really excited about the activity, but somehow, their enthusiasm turned sour on the day of the actual event. The director told us that he could no longer accompany us because he had a really important meeting to attend, the professor showed up fifteen minutes late only to proceed to the director´s office to suck on a mango, and the kids refused to ask the questions they had prepared, instead opting to mock the mechanic and throw things across the room. I was mortified, to say the least, but luckily the mechanic was light-hearted about the whole catastrophe. He was around our age and was actually really gracious towards us even after this all went down. He thanked us for sacrificing the comfort of our lifestyles in the States to work with youth who were clearly ungrateful towards us. He was able to add a cultural context to the behavior of the kids, which actually made me more motivated to continue working with them. He made me want to resist taking things so personally.

We thought we were free from disappointment after the presentation ended, but as we walked up the hill to my house, we came across the director playing soccer, the activity he claimed earlier was a ¨very important meeting.¨ I really don´t think I have ever been so furious. After hiding behind a wall for a few minutes and trying to decide whether a confrontation was worth it or not, Reannon and I marched over to bitch him out (excuse my French). Before he thought we saw him, the director tried to hide (clearly COMPLETELY aware that he had done something wrong), but fortunately for us, there are few hiding places on a soccer field. I told him that he should be ashamed for not taking part in activities that we had worked so hard to plan for his students. He stuttered, and said very little that made sense, but we did get a promise from him that he would partner with us more willingly during the next school year. It was never my intention to bully people into working with me, but it really does seem to be my last resort.

I am still pretty aggravated about how the school year ended (the above incident occurred on our last day), but the beginning of Carnival has come at just the right time to alleviate my stress. Usually, I am not a fan of how long it lasts (2 months), because it means I am not safe from paint or water balloons being thrown at me for what seems like an eternity. Try carrying important paperwork in a war zone! This year, I have changed my attitude though. Before anyone could hit me with a balloon, I decided to perform Carnival´s opening ceremonies with two friends. These ceremonies consisted of renting a room with a balcony for a full afternoon, filling countless water balloons, hitting people who thought that Carnival hadn´t started yet, and suppressing giggles as we ducked behind the wall when they tried to figure out what in God´s name had just come flying at them with such force. My friend Evan spent the holidays in the States, and because he is a very forward-thinking guy, he brought back the mother of all water balloon slingshots. This thing shoots balloons up to 75 miles per hour, and we managed to hurl balloons up to two full blocks. Unfortunately, we can´t hit people with it because it is rumored to cause facial fractures, but somehow (maybe as a result of mild alcohol consumption), hitting buildings and roofs was beyond entertaining. Last year, I made elderly people my target because they are slow-moving and easy to hit (don´t worry, I was gentle and my attacks resembled wet kisses more than water balloon smackdowns), but this year, my aim has improved and I plan to hit any teenager who looks like one of my students. Beware if you fall into their age bracket. My facial recognition is fairly poor when I am on a balcony looking down on the world below, so I can´t be blamed for hitting the innocent. And to be honest, hitting any teenager has proved just as satisfying as bombarding my actual students. I would say that it is all done in good Carnival fun, but the thing is….

Ahhh…the ways we choose to relieve stress in our lives! Water balloon fights are my new favorite release! I can´t even imagine how fulfilling February 2nd (the official date of Carnival) will be.

So the end of this holiday season was much less depressing than last year´s, possibly because I am coming home in 7 months. I also decided to take a trip to Lima after Christmas to further cushion my post-holiday transition. I haven´t gotten the chance to know Lima very well, so my boyfriend and I made every effort to conquer the city. We (he) mastered the bus system, and we were able to navigate our way to the presidential palace, the art museum, the main plazas, and many phenomenal restaurants. My favorite memory of the trip is unknowingly walking into one of Lima´s nicest restaurants with him wearing an uber-casual ¨Booty Hunter¨ t-shirt adorned with a giant colorful pirate. Once we realized how utterly ridiculous we (again, he) looked, we were already too far into the restaurant so we awkwardly sat down and ended up enjoying some of the best Italian food we have ever had. Even though we were still dressed like Peace Corps Volunteers, it was nice to eat more luxuriously for a night. I really miss excellent food. Inspired by the Italian restaurant, I cooked up my version of a nice Italian meal for a couple of friends to bring in the New Year with, and we ended up welcoming 2008 with a nice conversation, something else I find myself really missing here. Not too shabby of a holiday, especially for one spent in a foreign land, away from family and friends.