Things I've Learned So Far

-There is absolutely no consideration for noise in Peru, during sleeping hours or not.  If I'm watching TV in the living room, my host mom might be blasting the radio in the kitchen so loud I can't hear the TV.  If it is 3 am and there is a party going on next door, they're definitely not concerned about the neighbors trying to sleep - the music keeps blasting.  The parrot that we have, that starts screaming at 5:00 a.m. EVERY morning, my family finds hilarious while I have debated various methods of murder that would not incriminate me.

- I will, without a doubt, shit my pants while I am here.  Our Peace Corps Doctor gave us a presentation entitled "Oh the Places You'll Go...to the bathroom." We actually watched videos of current volunteers who described their personal experiences the first time they shit their pants.  One said, I woke up in the morning, was stretching a bit, bent over to touch my toes, and BOOM.  End of story.  Another girl simply said, "NEVER, EVER trust a fart."  Each training class apparently has a pot going for whoever is the last person to shit their pants.  Everyone puts in 2 soles during training, and then the last person to shit their pants wins.  There has been discussion among my training class about making it a secret society of pant shitters, which will been overseen by our good old Peace Corps Doc, Jorge.  Every volunteer has to email Jorge when they shit their pants, which I think he must really get a kick out of.

- Sunday is the most mortifying day of the week.  Last sunday was the worst, watching my host mother teach me how to scrub my underwear was mortifying.  Some people don't like it when people touch their clean underwear, imagine how I felt...  I still haven't quite gotten over how embarrassing that was. However, Sunday is still embarrassing because my host sister and I both do our laundry that day, and Angela is this tiny thing with equally tiny underwear to match.  Then we both hang them up next to each other on the clothes line, mine look like boat sails and her underwear look like handkerchiefs.  I find myself praying they'll dry fast so I can take down my boat sails and stow them away until next Sunday.

-Everyone says a general "gracias" when they finish their meal.  It's a bit strange for me because I feel more inclined to thank my host mom, and I always feel a little bad when she says thank you, because she's the one who cooked. I do double duty and thank my host mom also.

- There is a tradition of saying "que rico" as a compliment of the food, which pretty much means, "how delicious".  My host mom has pointed out that I can't roll my r's, and as a result i can't say "que rico" correctly.  I'm kind of embarrassed about it, so now I say "que deliciosa".

-Apple pie and Pizza are two foods highly associated with the U.S. and my host mom has asked me almost every day since I got here when I'm going to make those things for them.  To be honest, I have no idea how to make pizza or pie crust with ingredients here.  I told my host mom I would make those things when I could speak spanish better and actually ask for the right ingredients in the market.

- Walking up a mountain every day helps you lose weight.  I live on the top of an absolutely giant hill/mountain, and walking up it every afternoon has definitely been good for the ol' figure.

-  Cold showers...are really cold.  Taking a shower in the morning when it is 55 degrees out and my bathroom is subject to the same temperatures as outside, means I'm taking a shower that is 55 degrees, in 55 degree weather, at best.  Morning showers wake me up, to be sure, but they also make me a little hysterical, and if I try and shave, I shave off the top layer of my skin because I'm covered in giant goosebumps.  New plan of action?  I've discovered that in the afternoon, I have the best bet for 15 seconds of uninterrupted luke-warmness.  The water in the pipes has been sitting in the ground under the sun all day, and I have all the water in those pipes to at least wet down my body and get my hair wet, before it turns shockingly frigid again.  I'll take it!  
(I'm currently trying not to begrudge my family after discovering yesterday that they have an electric heater in their shower...I have a perpetual cold from my showers...and they have a heater.  I'm trying to throw them the benefit of the doubt that maybe it doesn't work?)

- When I leave the house, I should not leave my door unlocked.  My host mom will inevitably come into my room, decide what needs to be washed, remake my bed or maybe wash my sheets, move things around on my desk, and decide that she really doesn't like where I left my shoes, so she'll move them across the room under my bed.  I felt really guilty when I got home and realized she'd probably spent a bit of time in there, and a tinsy bit annoyed that she'd decided she liked my things in different places and took the liberty of moving them there.

-  America's got nothing on the "Mother Knows Best" phrase.  To many examples to (re)count.

-  All I needed to stop biting my fingernails was to live in a country where a parasite exists that if I ingest, will multiply under my skin and possibly in my brain.  They grow into big lumps under the skin, and the only way to get them out is to cut me open and hope they crawl out.  FUN.  If they get into my brain? Well, it's likely I'll die.  Yeah.  Lifetime habit of biting my fingernails came to a very sudden end.

- If I leave the house for a run and I can't find anyone to lock the gate/door to our house/compound, I need to shove the cinderblock up against the door from outside so our three dogs don't escape and get pregnant, which all of them have done (not while i've been here).

- Speaking of becoming a mother, I learned that I can describe the "pull out method" in spanish in really uncomfortable situations.  The guy in my spanish class mentioned the pull-out method as a joke during our conversation about contraception methods (we need to learn the spanish vocab because we're going to be sex ed teachers).  Unfortunately, he had no idea how to describe it when my spanish teacher asked, "what is that?", and so I was stuck describing exactly what that did mean...in less that perfect words.  I think I used a phrase like "before the BIG moment". hahah

- "Cockle-doodle-do" IS NOT an accurate description of what a rooster does.  It sounds more like 50 people's fingernails grating a chalkboard to a rhythm.  Also, roosters only crow when the sun comes up, IS CRAP.  They crow all morning, starting at approximately 3:00 a.m, until they feel like stopping.  They crow during the day, at night sometimes, and any time they hear another rooster, of the billion that live in my town, crow.  Where is my room located? Oh, I share a wall with the chicken coop.

- I really really wish I had bought a pair of Chaco's before I left the States.

- My favorite breakfast is avocado and bread.  They buy little fresh roll things there and they can buy 1 kilo of avocado (called palta here) for 2 soles.  That's approximately 2lbs of avocados for 75 cents. I'm in heaven...when i actually get that for breakfast.

- Portion sizes are outrageous here.  None of the volunteers can actually finish their meals because we are all given sooo much, except during breakfast.  I feel like I've traveled back to middle school, because every day all of our parents send us with our little lunches in tuperware containers with a fork and a napkin.  We have three microwaves at the training center and a refrigerator, so it works out alright.  I won the portion battle by describing to my host mom that at home, my mother and I eat an apple and cheese for lunch, and carrots and dip for dinner.  It's not 100% false, as that has been known to happen a lot, but I thought I would opt for much less, so that I didn't end up putting on pounds here.  Naturally, my host mom gasped and has allowed me to help decide my own portion size. Thank goodness.

- Don't under estimate the power of the phrase, "my mom would love you if...".  I made the mistake of using this phrase jokingly with my host mom in the first few days when we got to talking about my weight (it's not a big deal in Peru, it just is what it is).  I jokingly said, "yeah, haha my mom would love you if I was skinny when I went back to the states." BOOM.  I basically starved the next two days.  My mom was trying to do the diet with me, and she kept admitting that she'd had french fries or soda at her friends houses.  She finally had the idea to ask me if I was also hungry, and I said yes.  I'm still on my diet, and she is determined to get me skinny, but it doesn't bug me so much now, because instead of gobs of rice, I'm getting vegetables, which is a lot more healthy.  Most of the volunteers in my group would absolutely kill for some vegetables. Plus, the diet is working and I could stand to lose some pounds.

-  Boiled platanos make me gag. For breakfast some days, my host mom boils platanos in their peels and then you just unpeel them and eat them, and I gag every time.  It's nearly impossible to eat them, but I think they are part of my diet breakfast.  I tried to drop the hint that I love avocado.  Will try and subtly hint that I literally can't eat boiled platanos.  One step at a time.

- One of my favorite lunches here is what they called Arroz Cubano, or Cuban Rice. It's rice, with a fried egg and fried platanos.  Fried platanos are nothing like french fries, they are slabs of fried platanos, halfway between a potato and a banana.  It's delicious.  My host sister playfully called it "arroz pornograficos", which I didn't understand until she emphasized the fact that it was made with platanos and eggs. haha

- Training is exhausting.
5 a.m. - parrot screaming wakes me up
6:30 a.m. - stop dozing and either go for a run or just get up and get dressed
7-7:30 am - eat breakfast and chat with host mom
7:30 am - meet up with other Peace Corps Volunteers who also live in my village, Chacrasana
7:30-8:00 am - make commute to Training Center, which involves walking down the gigantic mountainy hill, getting on a combi (little crammed bus thing with a person who mans the door and yells at you), riding the combi into Chaclacayo, getting off at "Lavandaria" (this is a dry cleaners that happens to be on the street so the stop is called Lavandaria), and walking about 6 blocks to the training center.
8:00am-12:00 pm - After running my lunch to the fridge, I start 4 hours of spanish class
12:00 pm - an hour break for lunch and relaxing on the back porch
1:00-5:00 pm - four hours of community health related training,
5:00 - 5:30 p.m. - travel home in reverse order of morning, get home
5:30 - 8:30pm - do my homework, chat with my host sister Sheyla and my host mom, have a cup of tea or cup of instant coffee, convince myself not to go to bed at 6:00, maybe shower, watch some REALLY terrible television, eat dinner, do some dishes, say goodnight to everyone
8:30 pm - crawl into my bed, read a little, and go to sleep.
(I literally sleep all day Saturday.  I wish I was joking.)

- Peruvian television is ridiculous.  They have these ridiculous game shows that my sisters love to watch.  One of them is called "Canta Si Puedes", or "Sing, if you can".  They have people get on stage and try to sing while they are pretty much tortured.  There are three people to a team, and two teams, and each individual person has to do it on their own.  At the end, the judges vote for a team, and then the three members of the winning team stand on a wheel that goes faster and faster around in a circle while they sing a song and the amount of money they earn goes up.  The longer you stay on the wheel, the more money you make.  Still, the money they make for going through all that is not that much.  It's basically a torture show.  For the individual songs, I've watched the following terrible things happen: people blasted with ice water continuously,  a guy strapped in a harness and dunked repeatedly into a pool of freezing water, a few guys have had their legs, chest, and armpits waxed while they sang, one girl was covered in rats, another girl was strapped into a vertically spinning wheel with water balloons pinned to it and a guy threw knives at her while she spun to pop the balloons.  There really is no end to the madness.
There is another show where a bunch of different schools compete to win a trip somewhere and they have to do various games to try and win every night for a week in order to make it to the top two on friday night.  There are always bad consequences.  The one game they have EVERY night in this show is one where they tie girls hair into 10-13 different braids and then put a number on each braid.  There are usually three teams (for each school), and each team has their own color for the week.  The host has a box that he just pulls numbers out of, and each number piece is also a certain color.  For example, girl from red team would have 12 pieces in the box that are red and have numbers 1-12 for each of her braids.  When their number is pulled from the box, they have to decide if they are willing to have their braid cut off.  If they say yes, some guy cuts their braid off and they get to stay in the game.  If they say no, their team looses that test.  HOWEVER.  If they end up getting all their hair cut off while their is another contestant still standing, they loose.  Which I find TERRIBLE!  Some poor girl just sacrificed all her hair and her team didn't even win!
 There is also some other show with a super tall transvestite in a ridiculously giant dress/costume thing with 12 inch platform heels.  I haven't figured out what that show is about yet...I've convinced my host sister to watch Friends with me a few times.

-  TV Rules that exist in the States,like, you walk into a room and someone is watching something on TV so you either sit down and watch it, ask if you can watch something else, or go do something else, don't apply in Peru.  My sister, Angela, will walk in and change the channel to something COMPLETELY different without asking or saying anything.  Also, if you feel like you've compromised on something, it didn't happen.  The other day, Sheyla asked me what I wanted to watch and we went scanning through the guide to decide on something.  Harry Potter was on, and I got super excited and asked if she wouldn't mind watching it.  She said she liked Harry Potter too, and went to the channel.  It was in Spanish, but i could understand it, because I pretty much have the subtitles in my head.  About 10 minutes in, she just changed the channel to something else...but there weren't any commercials.  She was just done watching it, I guess.

- I learned how big a relief it is to read english before I go to bed at night.

-I learned how hard it is to feel really sick and still have to speak and try and understand a foreign language.

- I learned that there is NOTHING better that getting a letter!!!!!  I LOVE MAIL.  Thanks to Mom and AJ for my first two letters!  Best day of the whole week!!! :)

- I learned a lot of other stuff, but I'm exhausted, so I am going to fill in more later.  Leave comments! Or email me!  I would love love love to hear from you!