summer school, movie night, and my new friend

A lot of things have happened in the past month. I was sick and on antibiotics for the fifth time in the last four months. This last time put me in the emergency room in the middle of the night. Even after they injected medicine in my IV to keep me from vomitting, I still couldn't hold down even a gulp of water with my medicine. My summer classes have started and that gives me something to do and think about throughout the week. I look forward to my classes, especially the younger grades. I'm struggling a bit with the older kids. I can't tell how much of our problems are cultural and how much of it is just because these are teenagers with attitudes. But I know I'm not the only volunteer struggling with lack of participation. Sara's students all cheated on their exam this week. I pretty much yelled at my kids when they wouldn't participate in activities or at least explain why they didn't want to participate. I asked them if they'd rather me make them do math, science, or read the encyclopedia! (I did make another class do that once, but only a small section before looking at a cool photo slide show.) This all escalated in the next class with me asking a girl to leave. I actually ended up going to her house and talking to her; she is supposedly returning on Monday.

The movie night was a pretty big hit. The technology tried to fail me at every corner, but we at least had something to show the community. I had advertised this “Gran Noche de Cine” - Grand Night at the Cinema – for the community to enjoy for just S/. 1.00. I checked out the Peace Corps projector, borrowed a dvd player and big speakers. There were shout-outs on the radio for the big night, announcing that we'd be showing “Ice Age” to benefit the students painting a mural of the world. Throughout the week, I would be walking or jogging around town and people would yell out to me that they were coming to the movie night. Other volunteers, Sara and Lisa, came to Corral de Arena for the big event. We were setting up and things kept breaking. The speakers were making this loud cranking noise and broke at one point. My extension cord stopped working during setup. (Who would have thought that a cheap 1 sole extension cord would break? Haha.) I forgot some wires and had to run home a couple of times and we had to switch dvd players. And then, we still don't know why, but the projector would only play the movie in black and white.

With all of the technical problems, it was good that 7pm really means 8pm in Peru. I thought this was just because people were naturally running later, but they actually planned to be an hour late. That is what is really puzzling. As people were telling me that they were coming, they would say 8pm...even though all the flyers, the poster, and the radio broadcasts said 7pm. In the end, it was a successful event. We made S/. 50 (enough to cover part of the costs, and I'll just keep the rest of the supplies I buy and use them for my next project).

I have a new friend, a 50 year-old Peruvian woman who lived outside of Los Angeles for six years. She was married to an African American that works for the LAPD. They met while he was vacationing in Peru. At the time, she was 28 years old. I won't go into all the details, but now she's divorced and living in Peru again. She comes over weekly and we both enjoy talking in English. I love that she's so American in many ways. They call her “gringa” even though she's Peruvian. She likes to walk, hours and hours everyday for the sake of walking. (I walked to Olmos the other day. It took me 3 hours and I was sunburned with blistered feet by the end. The whole way, people keep stopping to offer me a ride into town or ask me what I was doing, confused when I tried to explain it was for fun, for exercise. The just seems silly to them.) One afternoon I asked my new friend, Romy, what she'd been up to and she told me she had woken up at 4:30 in the morning, had gone up the mountain and back down. I had suggested to the director of my school to hike the mountain for fun with the kids. And he told me, ¨to you Americans, this sounds like a fun idea¨. So I´m very happy to have my very American Peruvian friend. And she eats fruit! Lots and lots of fruit!

Most of my meals consist of potatoes, chicken and rice. My diet is lacking in the fruit and fiberous vegetable department. There have been a few times I've tried to get away with just eating cereal, fruit and yogurt for dinner. But even when I say that is all I want, they will fix me a heaping plate of their food, confused why I don´t want to eat it in addition. Before they bring me the food, I can hear them talking about she. ¨She wants to eat her cereal and yogurt, nothing more.¨ ¨¿That´s all?¨ ¨That´s what she said.¨ And then, surely enough, there will be a plate of their food and them calling me to the dinner table. The second time this happened, I was going to make a stand and refuse their food. But then I went to the table and the food for the evening was more of a variety than usual. The chicken had some sort of red sauce and there were mashed sweet peas. I´ll have to make my stand on a rice and potato day.