Christmas came early

While I'm extremely excited to go home for Christmas this year, I've realized I'm simultaneously more than a little sad that I won't be in Cajabamba. Because all my host family, friends, and counterparts know I'll be missing the majority of the Peruvian Christmas season this year, they have gone out of their way to make sure they celebrate with me before I leave, so this week has been full of holiday treats and cheer. I've been invited to coffee by some of my community bank ladies, invited to lunch by a restaurant-owning couple of friends, and invited to various other Christmas festivities involving copious amounts of hot chocolate.

Having tea with some of the Sercofe bank ladies

I've also received gifts! One of my students shyly presented me with four avocados from his family's farm on our last day of class. Another student stood up and gave palabras (made a speech) wishing me a nice Christmas and safe trip home. And of course Lourdes and Javi, not to be outdone, gave me a very special early Christmas present: a hand-made statuette of a Cajabamba diablo (devil). The diablos are a tradition unique to Cajabamba - they are even listed in Peru's national register of cultural patrimony. Every year during town fiesta (and on other special occasions), men and boys put on the ornate and colorful embroidered costumes, don the heavy ceramic masks, and dance el baile de los diablos all around the plaza. Diablo statuettes are thus a hot souvenir commodity in Cajabamba every October, and my host mom makes the best ones that I've seen. The entire costume is handmade, and she spends hours doing the stitching, beading, and embroidery, as well as painting the specially designed mask. Javi also contributes by cutting and polishing each statue's cedar base in his carpentry workshop. The result is a recuerdo that I know I will always treasure - assuming I can get it back to the States unharmed!

My diablo

Savings celebrations

One of my favorite (and longest-running) projects this year has been my savings and financial education sessions with a class of 7th graders. (Almost) every week since April, these boys have been saving one sole ($0.35) each and learning the basics of personal finances. Today was our last day of class for the year, so some celebrations were in order. My teacher counterparts and I took over the school auditorium and organized a chocolatada - a typical Peruvian Christmas custom where everybody drinks hot chocolate and eats panetón (fruitcake).

Goofballs

Cutting up the panetón

Once everybody was happily munching their treats, I was able to make my proud-teacher announcement: 35 out of my 37 students improved their scores on the financial education diagnostic test. This was a pre-/post-test that I first gave in April to assess how much the students knew about the topics I planned on teaching. April results showed that they knew very little, but November results showed an average improvement of about 90%! The kids seemed excited and proud of themselves, and were showing off their scores to each other.

Then it was time to liquidate their savings bank: each student had S/. 25 saved! And a couple super-enthusiastic savers had upwards of S/. 30 (they made sure to point this out to me :) ).

Tallying everyone's final savings

Making sure we had the right amount in the cashbox

Each student came up to receive their savings and sign their name on the register

The whole gang

I'll miss my weekly hangouts with these kiddos for the next few months (Peru's summer vacation), but hopefully we'll continue the savings bank next year!

The Colca

The Colca Canyon, located a few hours outside of Arequipa in southern Peru, was long known as the world's deepest canyon. Although scientists have recently re-evaluated and decided that a different Peruvian canyon, adjacent to the Colca, is actually a tad bit deeper, the Colca is still an impressive place to see. During my Thanksgiving vacation, I got to spend some time hiking in and around the canyon, led by awesome tour guide and fellow PCV Emily. Emily's town of Cabanaconde is perched on the edge of the Colca, so she knew exactly where to take us visitors.

Emily and one of the señoras from her town in traditional dress

Sunset in Chivay, another volunteer's site on the way to the Colca

Looking back at Cabanaconde across the fields - the Colca is known for maintaining the traditional terraced agriculture, and almost everyone in Cabanaconde grows only corn

View from the canyon rim, looking down on a large portion of the trail we would hike

An awesome hiking crew of Peru 19 ladies ready to start the trek: Lindsay, Anel, Liz, Kendra, Tekela, Emily, Nydelis, and me

Heading down to the Colca river

The canyon is super dry and hot at this time of year (aside from the oases at the bottom), so most of the plant life we saw was cacti

We also saw some pretty cool rock formations - this one reminded me of a toppling stack of CDs

Along the way we passed through some quaint and tiny towns

One of the farmers Emily knew invited us to try some of his miniature pears

On a certain section of the trail, we ran into a lot of rockslides. Most of them were still passable, but we hit one that was very recent, and whose central portion was too dangerous for us to cross. Trying to find a way to continue, we went back to the nearest town to ask about other trails. Instead, we found this tiny (and pregnant!) Peruvian lady who offered to help us get across.

Our new friend proceeded to make her way across the slide by digging a trail into the still-falling sand, no big deal

We all thanked her profusely, and then the trail of gringas managed to traverse the rockslide on the newly made trail

Eventually we made it to our destination for the night: the oasis at the bottom of the canyon, complete with a beautiful pool to jump in

Covered in dust as we were, and tired from a long day's hike, the water felt amazing

The last day was a shorter but steep slog straight up the canyon wall. We got up at 3:45am to avoid having to hike in the blazing sun, and made it to the top just as the day was fully brightening.

Shrimp soup

"Shrimp soup" might not sound like the most appetizing Thanksgiving meal, but let me tell you: the Peruvian dish chupe de camarones is one of the most uniquely delicious soups you can eat. The above bigger-than-my-head bowl of chupe is what I had for this year's turkey day, dining at a traditional Arequipan restaurant with 26 other Peace Corps volunteers. And as you can tell from the photo, the translation "shrimp soup" does not do this concoction justice - in reality, it's more like shrimp-crawfish-egg-potato-milk-cheese-bean-onion-herb soup, and it is amazing.

A Peace Corps Thanksgiving 

Taking advantage of our free Thanksgiving vacation days, I spent some time in Arequipa, Peru's second largest city, located in the southern mountains. Some friends and I also hiked the nearby Colca Canyon, but that'll be another blog post. This was my first visit to Arequipa, and I loved it. It's got the cobblestone colonial character of Cusco, but without the hordes of tourists. It's got the mountain traditions and vistas of Cajamarca, but it's a step ahead in developing its food/social/city scene. I loved just strolling around the streets, appreciating the arch-heavy architecture and beautiful volcanic stonework that gives Arequipa its nickname of "the white city."

The cathedral

Cloisters courtyard

Santa Catalina monastery at night

El Misti volcano overlooking the city

Traditional weaving, traditional arequipeña dress

Getting queso helado (literally "iced cheese") - really it's just ice cream that looks like cheese

Besides honoring the good old American holiday of Thanksgiving, we had also gathered in Arequipa to celebrate the 30th and 25th birthdays of two Peru 19ers. Twenty-seven volunteers in one city meant lots of great reunions, and of course some fun-filled nights out on the town.

Birthday kids Kaeli and Brad

Catching up with some 19er ladies: Carlhey, Lindsay, Nanda, me, Nydelis, and Anel

Street sellers

Every morning around 10:30am, my street is greeted by the nasal yell of the milk lady: "¡la leeeecheeee!" Literally, "the miiiiilk!" This little old lady prefers announcing her arrival via shouting instead of the traditional knock on the door. She walks to wherever her clients are, yells that she's there, and then sits down on the curb to wait for someone to open the door. I don't blame her - carrying two buckets full of milk up and down Cajabamba's hills every day would be tiring work, so I probably wouldn't bother knocking on doors either.

While the milk lady's particular voice and tone of shouting are indeed unique, yelling one's wares through the streets of Cajabamba is much more common than I'd prefer. Push-carts, bicycle-carts, and moto-carts selling fruit, eggs, metalware, batteries, sheets, and more frequently roll around town in the hopes of attracting clients with convenience. Many of them have even invested in a tinny megaphone that renders their shouting three times as loud. Usually I just tune these mobile sellers out, but once in a while I hear the holy grail of cart vendors: the strawberry man. Rapid-firing the word "fresa" (strawberry) into his megaphone over and over again, this one is hard to miss - luckily, since his fresas are ten times as good as any others that sometimes show up in our regular Sunday market. When I hear him shouting, I grab my wallet and rush out the door. The trouble with the megaphone system is that sometimes I hear the fresa man, but when I exit my house he's nowhere in sight - you've usually got to put in a little work for the reward of delicious berries. But after speed-walking down three blocks (in order to not look ridiculous by full-out running after fruit) as the strawberry cart rolls ahead of you, you get the satisfaction of having reached your goal, and the berries taste that much better.

Welcome chickens

These are Cajamarca's four new 22ers, and those are their welcome chickens. Beginning with the last group of volunteers, the Cajamarca PCVs started a tradition of welcoming our newbies with their own personal live poultry. The chickens are presented in a ceremony in the middle of the plaza - which of course attracts many curious Peruvian spectators - and are accompanied by speeches full of pearls of wisdom like "this chicken represents your life in Peace Corps: you'll be handed something you have absolutely no idea what to do with, and you'll just have to figure it out."

To complement the chickens, we also give each volunteer a goodie-bag filled with things we know they'll need in site (laundry detergent, a tupperware, toilet paper, etc.), and we make sure most of us are in the city for some bienvenida social activities on the new group's first weekend.

Eventually these little things add up to a close-knit Cajamarca family. What's weird is that we 19ers are now the "seniors" of that family. At any given time there are four full groups of volunteers in Peru - e.g., right now there's Peru 19, Peru 20, 21, and 22. The metaphor naturally emerges: seniors, juniors, sophmores, freshmen. It's strange to think that we're now the old and wise ones, and even stranger to realize that means we'll be ending our service in just about eight months. Time flies!

Gone camping

This year's Camp ALMA - the annual leadership camp for high school girls that we hold in Cajamarca - was a big struggle, but thankfully also a big success. The struggles came in the form of the logistical headache that is coordinating with Peruvian community partners. This was the first year that our region put on the entire camp without any external funding - this meant a ton more involvement from local counterparts, and consequently a lot more stress for we PCV planners. But, it's also a step towards making our camps more sustainable, which is a positive thing. Although the camp didn't run as smoothly as in past years, it was great to see the enthusiasm and support we received from our socios, and it still turned out to be a weekend full of fun and growth for our campers. So, here's some photos to show you some of what we were up to last weekend:

Jess, Linnea and I brought five girls from the schools we work at in Cajabamba

Upon arriving at camp, we split the girls into teams, so that they get to meet and work with girls from other communities. I was in charge of the green team, and my girls named our team "Green Girrls" (the second "r" was originally a spelling error, but I told them girls with two "r"s had extra attitude so they kept it).

First step to a successful camp: lots of icebreaker games

One of the camp's many workshops - this one was to learn about scholarship opportunities for college, and others included sexual health, leadership, gender equality, planning for the future, self esteem, etc.

Each team did a group project over the course of the weekend, choosing a problem they saw in their communities and planning a volunteer project they could carry out to address that problem - this is my team presenting their project on domestic violence.

But of course, camp is also a time for fun: field games

Dancing, led by Jackie as always

And a bonfire complete with s'mores

Finally, a pic of the whole camp: 39 girls, 17 PCVs, and some Peruvian counterparts

Some snapshots

I don't have much to say this week, despite - or maybe due to - being super busy with work. So I thought I'd just post some snapshots instead. This is the sports complex where Linnea and I usually go on Saturday mornings. For a while there was a consistent group of adults playing basketball, but the October fiesta and rains seem to have derailed that. So now we show up, knock the soccer ball around a bit, and hope that some elementary-aged children invite us to play with them - worst comes to worst, we just run around the field for a while. Regardless, it's a beautiful setting:

A couple weeks ago, on a day that was so sunny it belonged in summer, we went hiking up into the nearby mountains, and the views weren't too shabby there either:

We even went down to the river, which was much prettier and less muddy than the river of rain that now runs down my street every day