Still Stranded

I’ve been talking with the other Peru 18er girls from Cajamarca, and we are all going insane with this strike.  It really is like being grounded for something we didn’t do.  I think the worst part is the cow.  I would have left the next day and stayed away until that thing was gone if I could have, but it wasn’t an option.  Apparently authorities down in Chota are getting really angry at people who have not shut down their businesses out of solidarity with the strikers and are threatening to turn off electricity and water in the whole city (it’s not really a city…but it’s too big to be a town…).  I don’t think they’ve actually gone through with it…but I’m pretty sure that would mean a shut down in Iraca too and that would be the cow that broke the camel’s back.

I’ve been obsessively checking my email on my Kindle hoping for some communication from home.  I’m so borrreeed.  I can’t do anything!  The school is closed, the health post is closed, I’m running out of toilet paper, and my room still smells like dead cow!

I washed some things, did my work out, and when I went to wash my face and anything that wasn’t covered in clothing, I pulled the hose off the faucet by accident and the whole faucet head came off, which meant water exploding out of the pipes all over me. This is the second time this has happened.  I got absolutely drenched as I called out Celina’s name.  Magically, I managed to get the whole thing back on the pipe, and by the time Celina showed up it was fixed, and she almost fell over she was laughing so hard…probably because this wasn’t the first time.  She called Edwin over to look at me, and I dramatically displayed my sopping wet self.  That, accompanied with a baby wipe bath made me the cleanest I’d been in days. 

I can’t believe I’m going to be 23 in 8 days.  That seems crazy.  This year went by so fast!  I feel like 23 is a bad number and I’m not sure…maybe just because it’s not 22 and 22 is my lucky number?  Who knows. 

I’ve known I was coming to Peru for a year now.  Peace Corps has been such a crazy experience.  It’s like a weird pause in the middle of my life where the normal progression of things has halted but I feel like my emotional growth has gone into overdrive.  As maddening as this experience can be, this is such a healing and growing process for me.

Celina brought me milk again in my room, which I filled with a cappuccino packet I’d bought at Metro and some cocoa mix.  Delicious.  It hadn’t made me feel at all bad either day – guess I’m not lactose intolerant!!  Watched the 7^th Harry Potter movie, part 2.  I then decided to totally remake my dry erase board and it looks phenomenal now.  I used curly script and made everything really neat and organized.  It took me a while.  I took pictures because I have nothing else to do. I wrote in my journal and went to bed.

WOOT!

The board is usually full...but there isn't much to do during a strike...
and I was just starting to fill it up. 

Freshman summer, I worked as a teacher for the U.S. Grant Program with some seriously amazing people.  One of the jokes we had that came out of that experience was the question, “What is your life?”, which is what you would ask someone in place of a teasing, “What is wrong with you?” or “I can’t believe that happened!” or “That’s ridiculous!”  It had a lot of functions.  I ask myself that question a lot in Peru.  I asked myself that question at night when dogs from all over Iraca came to our house to fight with each other over the cow, or whenever some neighbor nearby gets drunk and fires his pistol for fun.  What is my life?