A New Year

The holidays passed smoothly - I celebrated Christmas and New Years with my host family in site, and it was really interesting to learn about their traditions.

Christmas: is celebrated starting the night of the 12th. We all got together, and at midnight went around hugging and kissing everyone to wish them a merry christmas, then had our christmas feast, sang 'feliz navidad' about 35 times. At 2 am we took a taxi to grandma's house down the road to sing more with her, so I didn't make it to bed until close to 4. On Christmas day the family went out to a restaurant to have Christmas Cuy and play sappo. Eating a guinea pig was an experience, and I'm glad it's over and done with.

For New Years my 24-year-old sister, Barabara, and I planned a party at our house. About 25-30 people were coming, and we got steaks of pig meat and papas to serve to all, as well as 7 cajas of chela and a few bottles of pisco to toast with pisco sours. At midnight we all went outside to watch the life-size doll be burned in the street as we were dodging the fireworks that the children were shooting at each other. We were all wearing our yellow underwear for good luck, we passed around rice and lentils to signify having food and money for the year, we ate 12 grapes and made wishes on each of them . . . then we danced till dawn. I went to sleep around 7 and when I went out at 10 am there were still people drinking and celebrating. That's endurance.

Work is going well - I started teaching English classes at the summer school last week and I'm starting my teen health club the upcoming week. I also am headed to a workshop to learn a bit of Quechua, one of the indigenous dialects, and I'm really excited about it. There will be 8 volunteers at the workshop, so it will also be cool to see the other people and hear about how their sites are.

One of the biggest bands in Peru, Kaliente, came to my site for a concert, and Emily came in to go to the concert with me. We ended up meeting the band and dancing on stage in front of my entire city . . . I still haven't stopped hearing about my impressive cumbia skills. Grupo 5 is coming in a few weeks as well. We may have to have an encore performance just to not disappoint all of our fans . . .