Happy Dia de Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving)

When Tasi and I decided we wanted to plan a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all our friends, we knew it would be an undertaking. Things in Cusco never work out the way you want them to and people never show up on time or just never show up. So, not only were we inviting lots of people to a dinner at 7, we were also asking them to bring something to contribute to the meal. That meant if someone didn't showup, we were out a person and part of dinner. However, in the end, we had a very happy Thanksgiving with Maruja, Herbert, Gladys, Manuel, Kevin, Rosalio, Juan Carlos, Jose Luis, Robert, Roderigo, Yeni, Marie and Anaise. The original idea was to buy chicken and then have everyone else contribute the rest; mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, salad, bread, pie and soda. However, chicken proved to be too expensive and we had no way to cook it, so we turned to hot dogs. Then we decided to make macaroni and cheese because the cheese we had was about to expire. So for Thanksgiving we had hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, bread, a Peruvian salad made from beets, potatoes, carrots, and peas, apple pie, soda, and champange for a toast. Also, everyone wrote down what they were thankful for on a piece of construction paper, which we put up on the wall and will keep forever. It turned so much better than we thought it might, for which we were very grateful. When the holidays come around, it can be a difficult time for me because I miss being with my family and doing all the traditional things that we always did together. So, for everyone here to come and participate in this American holiday and to give us a great Thanksgiving, really meant a lot. It just helped to remind me that I have some great friends and some great support here and a lot to be thankful for.

One Year Ago Today.....

One year ago today I arrived in Cusco. It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by already. I've come a long way, but there's still a ways to go. Some days this place feels like home but there are still some days when I still feel lost. I've met so many people, made more mistakes than I can count, and have 15 girls who I can't wait to see everyday. I've cried, laughed, yelled and misunderstood my way through this year and I am excited to see what the next year brings. I have learned so much, but I also can't wait to be home to be with everyone again. As for as update, things here are going good. I spend a lot of time helping in the store and keeping everyone in line, although I only have a fifty fifty chance of being taken seriously. We moved to a new apartment and are in decorating mode. Christmas is coming and everyone is getting excited for that. It's pretty much business as usual. Thanks for all the wonderful support this past year.

A Visit From Mom

My mom came to visit the first week in August. After flight delays that got her a day later than she was supposed to arrive, we had a fabulous week together. She came with her best friend, Margot, and we toured Peru like nobody's business. We visited Incan ruins in Pisac and Ollantaytambo, the amazing Machu Picchu, and course, all the shops that we could possibly find the time for. I showed them where I worked, where everyone said we looked like sisters, and introduced them to all the girls and got to show what it is I do here everyday. They also saw my apartment, and the areas I live in. We had fun getting to know my friends, who took us all out to a yummy chicken dinner. We also toured an art museum and took a trolley tour of the city of Cusco. We had a great time catching up and spending time with each other. Everyone here loved meeting my mom, and keeps asking me when she is coming back to visit. I had a great time, as I had not seen her since last November, when I embarked on this 2-year adventure. I also really enjoyed being a tourist for a week. We stayed in really nice hotels and I got to eat all I wanted from their breakfast buffets and ate more meat in a week than I have in my entire time here. It was a really special treat, but the best part was seeing my mom and being able to spend a whole week with her.

Becoming familiar with nothing that is familiar

As I am finally becoming familiar with Cusco, I realize that I really miss the things that I have always been familiar with. I know my way around Cusco, but everything that I am familiarizing myself with is all different. I miss being able to go to the supermarket and seeing foods that I recognize. I miss being able to walk down the street without anyone staring at me. I miss being able to call up friends to just hang out for a while. I miss turning on the television and watching shows in English. Sometimes, I just miss how much easier it was when everything was familiar, when I was more confident in life. I really like the people that I have met here and Cusco is a beautiful city, but it takes a lot of getting used to. I dislocated my ankle, again, so I have had a lot of time to sit and think about things. I celebrated July 4th on my couch with a fig cake that said Happy Independence Day in Spanish from my friends and mentors here Herbert and Gladys. I have been in Cusco almost nine months now and there are still days when I just have no clue what is going on. I guess there will always be those days, but they can be tough. I have a new schedule at the bakery, that does not include being at the cash register a lot, for which I am grateful. I check up on the girls to make sure everything clean and in order in their rooms (I am very lenient with this process, as my room is no picture of cleanliness either), I have organized the disaster that was the library and now everyone has to check out books through me. I also created new menus for the store for our fresh juices and hot drinks and advertising, which turns out to have been generally a waste of time. Why a waste? Four new volunteers from France have been here for a couple of weeks, doing a type of internship through their university. They are all very nice and while they are here they have to do a project. The nun in charge here asked them to do the same exact things (i.e. the menus and advertising) that she asked me to do over a month ago. The thing is she didn't tell either one of us that she had asked the other to do the same things. So I finished everything just in time to find out that they had found a company in France that was going to do them all professionally. You can imagine my frustration, but that's just the way things go here sometimes, most of the time actually. I am recently coming off my crutches, so I will be more useful once again. Everyone here can't believe that I hurt my ankle for the second time and it has earned me the nickname of "Clumsy Jersey" from one of the regular customers. All the girls here continue in their studies, most of them doing well. There have been a lot of requests for English homework help, so that keeps me busy as well. Also, all the secret boyfriends give us lots to talk about. We recently acquired 2 baby chickens who have been fondly named Meghan and Catherine, although there is now debate over whether Catherine is male or female. When things get realy hard is when I miss my more familiar life on the United States, but I always try to keep things in perspective. This is all a learning experience and is so much to learn from Cusco.

It's been a long time coming...

So it's been quite some time since my last blog, but my free time has been extremely limited. All of March I spent on crutches after I tore a ligament in my ankle. In April my community member Catherine returned home to the United States and since then I have been trying to adjust to life alone in Cusco. And, all of May I have been sitting at the cash register of the bakery where I work from 8 in the morning until 9 at night, which doesn't leave much time for anything else. I will be finished with this schedule the end of this week, and I could not be happier. I have learned that accounting and cashregistering are not my calling and this area of work is much better off without me. I think everyone will be happy when the normal cash register lady, Betty, comes back, because since I started, we have been short money almost every single day. An accomplishment, but not one that I am too proud of. I hope to return to a normal schedule and to be able to have time to explore what Cusco has to offer. In other news, I have finally been approved for my resident visa, and after one more trip to Bolivia, I will officially have temporary residency in Peru. The biggest benefit of this is that I can enter all the tourist sites without having to pay because technically I am Peruvian. I hope this updates everyone a little bit and I will try to ot up more posts soon. Peace!

Bribing Bolivia

So, my dear friend Maria says it is time for a new post, and she is most certaintly right, for there is much to tell about the adventure that is my life here in Peru. Catherine and I needed to renew our visas in order to stay in Peru. When we arrived in Peru, we got tourist visas that were good for 90 days. We are in the process of applying for a resident visa that is good for one year, but while were waiting for that, we needed to get another 90 days or face serious financial penalties. Since we realized this only about a week before our visas expired, we had to quickly plan a trip to Bolivia, the closest country where we could cross the border. What we really only had to do was cross the border into Bolivia, get our passport stamped, and then reurn to Peru to get a new 90 day visa. Sounds like a process that should only take about 30 minutes.....WRONG! What we thought would only be a day long trip turned out to be the worst three days of our lives. First we figured out that the shortest amount of time possible that wecould do this in was in 3 days. We left Cusco around 10 p.m. Friday night (after I realized I had forgot my passport and had to frantically take a cab back to our apartment to get it before the bus left us). After driving around Cusco for about 2 hours (for reasons we still don´t know), we were on are way to Bolivia. With only a few short stops to drop off other passengers, we arrived at the Peru-Bolivia border around 9 a.m. the next morning. There were lots of long lines and a bunch of waiting in Peru but we had no problems and soon enough we were in Bolivia waiting in line to get our visas. To make what could be a very long story short, we get into the office and see lots of sign with a list of seven requirements for American citizens to enter Bolivia, none of which we actually had brought with us. We weren´t sure what was going to happen to us, but we hoped for the best. What actually happened was the worst. We were taken into a back room where immigration officials explained to us that there really wasn´t a whole lot we could do because we had already left Peru and we couldn´t enter Bolivia without a credit card, a copy of a roundtrip ticket, a copy of our hotel reservation, $100, a copy of our yellow fever vaccination, etc. We explained that we were only coming for the day so we could get back to Peru and renew our visa, and that we weren´t touring the country, so we would never have a round trip ticket and a bunch of the other things, but didn´t seem to matter much. We were stuck, without a country to accept us. So when we asked what we could do, you can imagine what the resonse was...MONEY, they told us. How much were we willing to pay to be able to enter Bolivia for less than 24 hours. Well, we paid, and it cost us more than just money. We now have a visa to enter Bolivia that is good for 5 years, but at the cost of many of the values that we hold in high regard. I have spent a lot of time working for fairness and equality, trying to make people see that corruption and abuse of power is what is wrong with the world and is what causes the poverty and wars in so many countries and I have now become a part of that system. It was an experience I would like to forget, but it has also reminded me that there is still a lot of work to be done. We survived our trip and have sucessfully renewed our Peruvian visas, but we do have to return to Bolivia to pick up our resident visas around the end of March, that is if they don´t find out that we are actually criminals and obtained our Bolivian visas illegally. I trust this information to all of you and ask you to remember that I am actually trying to do a good thing here, so please think twice before turning me in.

Newsletter Article

Here is an article I recently wrote for the Good Shepherd Newsletter.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can buy masking tape?”
My whole volunteer experience here in Cusco, Peru can be summed up in the implications of this simple question. My time in Cusco has brought on many feelings of insecurity, unfamiliarity with my surroundings and a general feeling of being lost that can be represented by this question.

My community member Catherine and I wanted tape to hang things on the wall. Now at home, all I would have to do is go to my kitchen and get some. If it wasn’t there, I knew probably at least 10 places where I could go and buy some, very easily. Here in Cusco, however, things are a little different. We had no clue where we could go to find it. So, first we tried to call people to see if they could tell us where to buy tape, but no one answered. Then our landlady said that she would show us to a place where we could get some. However, we got there and they didn’t sell it. So we were left standing in the rain, with no idea where to go to find tape.

This is a common feeling, having no idea where to find the simplest things, no idea where to go. Not even a clue if I should turn left or right because nothing is familiar. Frozen in the street, trying to remember the reasons why I wanted to come here.

When I am fed up with not being able to find a store that sells the tape, or hangers, or a cooking pot, when I am asking myself why I am here if all I do is continue to make mistakes and not understand what is being said to me, when I feel like all I want to do is hop on the next flight home to my mom, I remember the reasons I don’t just throw in the towel and return to my easy, privileged life in United States where there is a store that sells tape on every corner.

They are Florencia, Lourdes, Wilfredo, Manuela, Urbana, Tina, Magdalena, Ana, Oswaldo, Maruja, Laura, Lucila, Sergio, Madeleyne, Yanet, Eliza, Efrain, Isabel, Fredy, and Cintia.

These are the people I am privileged to work with everyday. They have opened their lives to me. They are patient with my constant questioning, always help me to correct the mistakes I make in Spanish and have made me their friend. If all they need me to do is sit and talk with them, to joke around, to offer advice, or to just listen, ok. I can do that.

I know that Maruja always waits to the last minute to do her homework, so I know that Sunday nights, she will need help. Urbana doesn’t like cucumbers, so when Sister Janet isn’t looking, I put hers on my plate at lunch. If I’m ever bored, I know that Florencia will always have something to talk about and she’ll make me my favorite juice, a banana smoothie.

We have only known each other for about three months, but we have created strong relationships. They trust me with their pasts, their troubles, their secrets. I am honored to have been given that kind of trust and I know that I can trust them in the same way.

I still haven’t figured out where to buy tape, but I have a lot more people in my life now that I can ask, and I know that they will always point me in the right direction.

When does it get easier?

Some days, I feel like the world is just pointing its finger at me and laughing. Every time I take a step forward, something happens and I fall back three steps and have to start all over. I try and make plans with a friend and then they don't show up. I think I know what I'm doing when in reality, someone is following behind and fixing everything that I have just done. Most days I find myself searching for something that I can do that is actually useful. A lot of days I feel like I am fighting with Cusco, and usually Cusco wins. The taxi drivers try to charge us a higher fare, we get called all kinds of names in the street, and we have to accept the fact that we will never fit it, we will always stand out, no matter how much time we spend here. We go out for chicken and sit down at a table and no one bothers to tell us that we have to order at the counter first and it takes us 15 minutes to figure it out. Both Catherine and I are desperately trying to make friends, but things just never seem to go our way. If it can go wrong, it usually does, and when you think it can't get worse, it does. When I need to call someone, our cell phone doesn't work, our landlady isn't home, so we can't borrow her phone, and the public telephone up the street isn't out and I don't have any change. I lost our cell phone on New Years and the next day I was supposed to go to a concert with a friend from work. I went to the spot we agreed to meet and waited for over an hour , but he never came. The next day he explained that there weren't any buses running so he couldn't get there and that he had tried to call me but of course I didn't get his calls because I had lost the phone. I was working at the cash register and forgot to mark down that a customer had already paid. He went to leave and we made him come back because we thought he hadn't paid and he got mad and yelled at me and said that a foreigner shouldn't be doing this kind of work and he only wanted to deal with Peruvians. The tough realization is that my help is not really needed here. There are already enough people who know what they are doing that work here everyday. I help out, but things would continue on just fine, sometimes even better, without my help. There is one thing that I can offer that nobody else here can do and I started that this week. My first week of English classes went surprisingly well, but it is going to be hard work. The pronunciations of everything is really difficult, but everyone if very eager to learn. I still wonder if this is even a useful thing, but it's what they want, and it makes me feel like I am contributing a little. I love talking and hanging out with everyone, but some days that just isn't enough and I get frustrated because I feel like I should be doing something more. I have a lot of time left to figure it all out and I know that eventually, hopefully, things will get easier. For now, however, I'm still looking for ways to make up with Cusco, because we really are going to have to get along.

Ringing in the New Year

The New Year celebration here was crazy. Catherine and I made plans to go out with friends but, of course, they didn't work out so we ended up going out on our own to experience New Year's Eve in Peru. The big celebration is in the Plaza de Armas, the main square in the middle of the city. We got there around 10:30 and ran into someone we knew, so we were not alone to celebrate. Around 11 p.m. everyone starts setting off these fireworks and the plaza is filled with smoke and noise. There had to be around a thousand people there. We bought some beer and toasted the New Year on the steps of the main cathedral in the square as what seemed like millions of fireworks went off all around us at midnight. The we joined everyone in running around the square so that we would have good luck in the New Year. There were people running with there luggage because they hope to travel in the coming year and almost everyone was wearing something yellow, which apparently is good luck too. The entire day vendors were out in the street selling all kinds of yellow things, but the most popular is yellow underwear which you are supposed to wear on the outside of your clothes. It turned out to be a fun night and Catherine and I both enjoyed ourselves. I wish everyone a very blessed New Year full of Peace and Happiness!