Cake is not meant to be eaten

I give Christmas 2.7 out of 5 stars. Not great, not bad, interesting, yet I would have preferred to be home by far. I woke up the morning of the 24th hoping for lots of Christmas spirit and cheer. Turns out that Reina went into Piura for her college classes as usual, another one of my host sisters had to work, my host brother worked as well, and the rest of the family did other routine-type stuff. So I was left reading alone in my room. After reading about how Jeffrey Sachs ended Bolivia´s hyperinflation and brought Poland´s socialist economy back into the world market, I was feeling a bit nerdy and alone. So I decided to do two things that make me happy: download pictures onto my flickr photo blog to remind myself of the beauty I´ve seen, and then hike/run through a farmland-lined road to exercise, enjoy nature and meet new people. It worked like a charm. I hiked farther than I have in the past and discovered another bend of the river where it is wider and full of ducks, herons and fish. I met a woman who says she`s there every day selling alcoholic chicha to farmers, who I was happy to meet not because she probably contributes to the prevalence of alcoholism in my town, but because I´ll probably see her regularly throughout my next two years worth of hike/jogs.

Then I got home and started doing crunches on my nice straw mat in my room. Reina came in and said, "Are you ready because we´re leaving now." "Now now or like in half an hour now?" "Now now." So I was like, crap, and ran to the shower to rinse off really quickly, dashed back into my room to change and was ready in 15 minutes. More than 4 hours later, after eating a juicy delicious mango, getting frustrated because the phone card company was severely malfunctioning so I couldn´t call my family and a really long nap, we finally left the house. I thought we were going to midnight mass and that was still what my family was implying. We went to a nearby town to a party that celebrated the baptism of two kids. We were there until 1:30AM. Oh well, I guess I still haven`t had a religious Christmas. Instead, I spent the night denying extremely drunk men a dance, dancing with respectable men of the family I already knew, eyeing a cake that we never ate, unsuccessfully aiming my pee into this little drainage hole that was in the so-called bathroom, and eating not so tasty food. Although the turkey wing I ate, that had been ripped off the body with my host aunt´s bare hands, was pretty yummy. I hear in NY my family was eating the tri-colored cake cookies that are oh so tasty, so I´m jealous. All in all, I definitely did some bonding with the extended family, especially with the females because we´d laugh at each other each time one of the repulsive drunk men would ask us to dance.

Then I spent two Vacation Days in Piura with 5 other volunteers from my group. We did almost nothing but eat soft serve ice cream sundaes, drink fruit juices, check our mail and pick up packages, talk about Christmas and our sites, swat at swarms of mosquitoes, call other volunteers on our cell phones, watch King Kong in a really nice theatre, and just really enjoy each other´s company. I hated King Kong. I liked the middle part that was very Lord of the Rings-ish, and I love Jack Black. However, 1) It was extremely racist, 2) It makes me hate people, 3) King Kong dies and no one warned me.

So I´m back in my town, back to my counterpart asking me to do 5 non-logical things at once, including translating an article from the Economist about Chile, Peru and mining (how do you say foreign exchange in Spanish?). All in all, it´s kind of nice to be back. If anything, because I was getting out-of-site guilt, which I hear is inevitable. And especially because I´m totally dry on money.