Viva San Jacinto

My weekend pretty much rocked and left me sleep deprived. It was the central weekend of a two-week long celebration for my town´s patron saint, San Jacinto. Boy, did they go way out for this guy. There was a band, or sometimes 3 different bands, parading around town all week long. Thanks to them, late night festivities, and the constant bombardment of bombaderos, or firecrackers that sound like gunfire and scare the living tso tso out of me, I haven´t been getting much sleep lately.

On Friday night there was a Marinera and Tondero competition in my town. Those are traditional regional dances that I had seen briefly but never fully appreciated until I was blown away by the competitors that night. Highly influenced by the Spanish colonizers, Marinera is a very fun and flirty dance. Dressed in ultra-feminine gowns and fervently waving a little white handkerchief, the women tempt their partner with intricate, quick footwork, sensuous hip movements, and mischievous glances. Also waving a white handkerchief, the meticulously dressed men playfully attempt to charm the women. I fell in love with the dance, and relished the competitive atmosphere. Most of the dancers were from out-of-town. Listening to their parents and dance instructors whistling and rooting them on by shouting, “Eso, eso, eso….” reminded me of my childhood dance competitions. Competitions are great because the adrenaline rush heightens the performance of the dancers, and you can tell they´re feeling the love from the audience. Some of the dancers were about 5-years old and just double the size of their hats. I spent the majority of my time taking pictures, which was a challenge because of the constant movement. However, my new best friend in town pushed us through the throng of onlookers and in front of the front row, which is where I spent my time filling up my memory stick.

She also managed to get me in basically the front row of the best show in the world: Burning of the Castillos. At first, I thought it was going to be a repeat of New Year´s where “burning” meant creating a normal orange fire of the uncontrollable bonfire type. However, when I walked into the plaza on Saturday night I saw 3 huge structures that were at least 4 or 5 stories tall made of reeds and a material that burns in various colors that sparks – not burns – in various impressive ways. As it moved along the carefully choreographed pattern, the white, green, red or blue spark slowly moved along the flammable material. Then just as I was thinking that the spark had died, these spinning things would start going crazy, spewing colored sparks everywhere. Even though I started in the 3rd row of the show, eventually I was in the 1st row, thanks to the fact that everyone in the first 2 rows ran away to avoid getting burned. Being the super courageous woman I am, I stayed for the love of photography (that was a joke). I took really great pictures and somehow managed to not get burned at the same time! It was the most amazing pyrotechnic show of my life, and not just because I was in the hazard zone. Sometimes words would start burning (“Viva San Jacinto”), or the cord connecting the three Castillos would light up the length of the plaza and send sparks flying downwards or upwards or in vertical circles or in horizontal circles, or shoot up various types of fireworks – you know, the 4th of July type that get sent hundreds of feet up into the air – in carefully timed succession. What really impressed me is that none of this used any sort of electronic, high-tech equipment. It was just thanks to the genius creativity of whoever made those giants in the next town over.

OK, now it´s time to talk about more sacrilegious things I´ve seen. At this rate, after 2 years, I´ll be able to make my “Top 10 Most Sacrilegious Church Moments” and have hundreds of moments to choose from. Anyway, so there was this competition between bands before the Burning of the Castillos. The bands, which could have been your average American marching band complete with drums and brass instruments, competed facing each other in the entrance of the Church. The only reason why this was eventful enough to report in my Blog is that one band thought it would be entertaining to have two girls in jewled hot bras and beaded thongs dancing and shaking their booties as they played. Naked butts shaking in front of Church. Hmmm…I couldn´t not say something about how ridiculous I thought that was, so I double-checked with my new best friend whether she thought it was abhorrent as well. Yes, she said. They´re not from here, but the people from here think it´s really disrespectful. Whew, I´m not this ultra-conservative weirdo.

Currently, there is a group of people dressed in Carnival-esque masks and costumes running around town with their own marching band (that has a wonderful jazz saxophone player!). They´re called “diablicos.” Some of them are dressed like devils, some like women. The only one who doesn´t wear a mask is this little boy that doesn´t smile -- he looks like he´s had a troubled childhood, in fact -- dressed in a white angel costume with wings. Anyway, after the sweatiest, most claustrophobia-inducing mass this Sunday, where kids and parents kept on pushing and shoving us poor church-goers who came late standing uncomfortably in a throng in the back of Church, we went to watch the diablicos. They were in the plaza with their band doing some crazy devil dance that involves a lot of hopping on one leg, and for one of the devils, hysterically laughing in a sadistic way. Unfortunately, I caught their attention when I took pictures of them. Being the mischievous a••holes they are, one of the devils started to pretend to use his cane to pull me into the center. At first, I laughed along and shooed them away. Then they chanted to me the theme campaign song of ex-Peruvian President, Alberto Fujimori (obviously, and oddly enough, he is Japanese). It goes like this: “Chino, chino (double-time now) chino, chino, chino.” That´s when I started to get a little annoyed. It´s kind of creepy to have a masked devil chanting “chino” at you amidst a crowd of Peruvian onlookers. To make matters even creepier, he started to bust through the crowd in front of me to really pull me into the center. I wailed in a meek and friendly way, “NOOO” and moved away without losing my temper. I mean, everyone was looking at me, so I couldn´t say, “BACK OFF, YOU FREAK,” which is what I really wanted to say. Regardless, I was irritated and a little confused about the whole ritual.

Today, the diablicos are marching around town again. They stopped in front of the Municipality, where I was waiting to talk to my counterpart on the second floor. I watched them from the window along with other employees. Despite my best efforts, they caught sight of me. So I hid, but kept on watching from a little corner. Then, I turned around and there he was, the stuff of nightmares, looking for me. Ah, you freak, go away!! Now that he had entered my workplace deliberately looking to annoy me, I had no problems running from him into the typist´s office, shutting the door and squatting so he wouldn´t see me through the window. I didn´t get up until someone told me he left. It amused the Municipality employees, who were laughing -- with me, not at me -- so I wasn´t as bothered as I could have been. However, if I encounter that loser again, and he tries to do his stupid devil dance and drag me into the center with his stupid cane, I swear I am going to knee him in the frickin´ groin.

I´ll be putting up pictures soon. They should be good ones. You have to see some of this stuff to understand what I´m talking about.

Oh, and HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!! I was so busy this weekend, I didn´t mind missing one of my favorite celebrations with my family. Go year of the Dog. My mom told me that my aunt told her that she read in the newspaper (of course) that Boars will find a new boyfriend this year. I told that to my host family and one of the sisters said, "Maybe to someone from town." Nope, not a chance, sorry. I joked to her that if that happened, they would post the news in the community´s newsletter.

missing my music

I am pathetic. I haven´t been able to save up enough money from my monthly allowances to buy a stereo. I´d buy new batteries for my discman, but then I´d get the headphones all sweaty, it´s THAT hot now in Piura. I just want a basic little stereo that plays CDs and maybe even the 2 tapes I brought (Johnny Cash and Social Distortion). There´s a little over a week left to January, so the next time I´m in Piura, I´m going to buy it since I have about 350 soles left, and the cheapest stereo I´ve found is 169 soles. I am on the Amazon website playing the little preview clips of The Slackers songs. I wish they would come play in Perú rather than Brazil. Now I wish I brought all of my CDs with me - it would have been worth the weight.

I think part of the reason why I´m dying to listen to my own music is that I have been going to parties all weekend and into this week as well for birthdays and weddings and such. Which means I have been listening to the same 30 songs over and over again, some of which I like, some which I find very annoying. My favorite is called "A Sabor a Miel," if you´re interested. I don´t know the band name, but the lyrics go más o menos like this: "A sabor a chocolate que me gusta, a sabor a caramelo que yo busco..."

Going to a lot of parties means I have been drinking a lot of sugary chicha morada, Pilsen beer and people´s backwash (remember how I explained that we "pass the glass" so you pour yourself a little bit into a glass, chuck the last drop onto the floor then pass it on to the next person). Remarkably, I am not sick. All of these parties are with the same people from the extended host family...which is cool because I am finally figuring out how each person is related and which kid belongs to which couple and feel more comfortable with the cultural procedures. Also, I walked into my host aunt´s house yesterday and discovered that there is a picture of me dancing with her husband from Christmas posted on their cabinet. Mind you, this couple is probably into their 60s. I don´t get the shady vibe from him, although it was weird to see that picture of me on their cabinet.

In terms of work, I have been organizing and planning the Municipality´s World Wetland Day celebration, which is Feb. 2nd. The program we came up with is to start with a slideshow showing wetlands throughout the world, which I´m creating right now using PowerPoint. Then we´re going to the Mangroves, of course. My counterpart expects that 100-150 kids will come. God, help me. So then I decided that due to the quantity of little brats we´ll have to control, we will corral them all into a little section of the beach where they will draw the mangroves and play with kites that they bring from home. The kites were my counterpart´s idea...they did a kite-flying competition last year, so they of course have to do it again this year, although I convinced him that there´s no reason to make it into a competition. At first I was like, where is the educational value in that?? But now that I am in a less stubborn and crabby mood, I think it´ll be cute. You gotta work within the culture, within the system sometimes. The random people like a school teacher and the community psychologist suckered in to help us by my counterpart, who never fails to prioritize political sucking-up over pragmatism, will supervise them and facilitate those activities. In the meantime, we´re going to take kids 10 at a time on a guided educational visit. I´m working with a bird biologist who has been studying my mangroves for the past 7 years. This guy also happens to have the same name as the famous Mexican-American grape boycott organizer! Obviously, he´s really cool. Since he´s working with us, I thought it´d be nice if he were able to catch some of the birds to do a show-and-tell with the kids. That kind of activity is common in the U.S., but they don´t do it much here in Perú, even though they have such a rich biodiversity to boast about. INRENA (the gov agency of natural resources) is also going to loan us a few pairs of binoculars. Of course, we´ll explain why the mangroves are important and all of that good environmentalist stuff. Even though at first, I felt overwhelmed by starting such a big project the day after the Festival was over, I am really excited now. Plus, I have been able to pull myself together to once again, feel calm and collected about dealing with my counterpart. I recognize that I am lucky that he is always so eager to do activities, even though we don´t always agree on how to do it. And when we are in a meeting together, and they come around with a tray of cookies, he takes a handful like he´s never eaten cookies before, which gives me the freedom to do the same... :o)

Quick update

Over the weekend I spent a good chunk of time uploading pictures onto flickr, finally. You can check out more views of training, the mangroves, my room, the kids from my extended host family, and shots from the Mangrove Festival.

Yesterday I went to the after-party of a wedding, this morning I went to a memorial of the death of my host dad´s brother, and tonight I think I´m going to a birthday party. Basically, I´ve only been here less than 2 months and already I´ve seen almost all the major life rituals.

Today I also went to Sunday mass. As my mind was wandering off, half-asleep, 2 male dogs ran under the bench in front of me and tried very persistently to copulate with a poor female dog. In church. In front of a little boy. Well, that sure woke me up.

The end.

Workin´ like a caballo

After "raising the national flag" and singing the national anthem - of which I proudly know 60% - on Sunday, my town released the marathon runners and cyclists, who competed without me, all the way to the mangroves. It´s about 18km. Although a lot of people were hoping I´d do the bike race, I decided it was a very bad idea considering my body had already been through enough stresses during the past few weeks. Plus, I wasn´t sure whether or not I still had the Nasty-D. So I rode in the municipality truck with the Queens of my town and the two neighboring towns. About 10 different photojournalists precariously stood on the back of the truck looking for the perfect action shot. There were about 20 people in the marathon, some of who were in their teens, at least one father-son combo, and about 3 women. I was upset that Prima didn´t run the marathon, because I knew she would do well and kick most of the boys´ traseros. However, she was feeling some out-of-site guilt, so she passed it up.

After a delicious and Nasty-D-friendly boiled chicken and rice lunch, I went back to the mangroves with my host family in a mototaxi that was so slow, the last-placed marathon runner could have beat it to the beach. When I woke up, the beach beyond the mangrove area was completely saturated with people, food stands, trucks, taxis and a band that few people were dancing to. It was amazing how many people were crammed onto the beach, which reminded me of the Jersey Shore. I craved funnel cake like nothing else. My host sister thought it was too cold to enter the water. So as of today, I still have only entered my feet into the Peruvian ocean. I´m pathetic. The mayor estimated that there were 12,000 people there. The newspaper estimated at least 5,000. Sound like the U.S., anyone?

On Sunday night, the extended host family kids opened my door with me thankfully not undressing behind it, and proceeded to play with the puppets from our mangrove puppet show. Which was cute until the 5 year old ripped off one of the heron´s legs, which I dealt with very well. Then they started rolling around in my mosquito net, which I usually roll up into a bag but had been too lazy to do so that particular day. No rips, however. So as I usually do when I start panicking about my material goods in Perú, I asked the 3 kiddies whether they wanted to draw. My childhood collection of crayons was one of the most brilliant things I packed. I think I´m a very cruel big person. I laughed pretty hard when the 7-year old boy scared his 4-year old sister with the puppets, which she apparently developed a fear to during our puppet show. Then he had a lot of fun putting on my laundry gloves and made lobster claws, which she also was afraid of. I laughed both times. I´m mean. However, I admit that I had a lot of fun with their rampant childhood imaginations that made my room into something more exciting than McDonald´s stupid Playland.

My plans for the rest of the week involved 3 things: sleeping, laundry and reading. And maybe going to Piura to pick up my long-neglected mail. Basically, me time. Because my body and my spirit needed it, dammit. Unfortunately, my counterpart called me at 8:50AM on Monday telling me to go join him in Piura for a 9AM meeting with the regional government. My head felt light for lack of nourishment and a diet that has my jeans riding lower than ever before. Plus, I was pissed at his a) lack of articulation and clarity when speaking to me on the phone so it took me forever to understand him, b) lack of telling me in advance about this meeting, and c) telling me, yet again, to do something that I had no idea what it was about nor why I was doing it. Shamefully, I was pretty excited when the secretary told me that the truck was in Piura and there was no money to send me to the meeting. No hard feelings. Really. I read 225 pages of The Nanny Diaries, which one of the volunteers left on my floor. Sorry Jeff Sachs, not in the mood.

OK, so one day of "me time" was all I got, but thanks to not talking much to anybody yesterday and Cipro, I´ve lost my loogies and gained my bathroom dignity back. Back to my counterpart driving me nuts. And scaring me. Apparently he wants environmental workshops in every single school in the municipality at all the different grade levels. That´s about 18 schools, and a ton of classes. No chance I´ll get to learn who the kids are nor be able to notice any sort of behavior changes. Hmph. No asking my opinion on the subject, no asking me what I hoped to accomplish, just telling me what we´re going to do. And by "we," he means WE. ME AND HIM. ME AND HIM DOING THE WORKSHOPS. TO GE THER. Uhhhhhhhh uh. I refuse to work with that high blood-pressured, anti-timeline-ed, anti-strategic planning-ed litterbug on environmental workshops. I had planned to work independently more or less after the Festival. So it´s just me, myself and the China, honey. That´s what I´m going to tell him. Soon.

Becoming Flaquita

I am so relieved the Mangrove Festival is almost done. This week has been highly stressful, although with really good moments in between. In addition, I am still getting over my cold and now I have the nasty-D. Yep, the all-too common ailment in Perú, the one where you´re running to the bathroom all the time. My host mom is really worried because I haven´t been eating too much. She says I´m going to become "flaquita," or a little thin girl. Fortunately, I was able to convince Reina that what I didn´t need to take was a laxative. Despite my hodgepodge of ailments, I have been staying in Piura every other night with the 9 volunteers who came to help me with the Festival, which means I have been getting very minimal sleep. It´s not every day I get to see these people. I slept all day today, and it was great despite that I have a million mosquito and flea bites that made me itchy and uncomfortable, and the worsening dry heat.

However, let´s talk about the good moments. The highlight was Wednesday. We did a puppet show in the morning called "Las Aventuras de la Flamenquita". It was about a newly-hatched flamingo trying to find its mother. As a heron, crab and fish join her in her search, she learns about mangroves and their importance. Then, a hunter comes looking to kill a flamingo (based on the fact that there are actually hunters from outside the community who come to kill flamingoes in our mangroves for sport). An actual mangrove character appears telling the little flamingo to hide in its roots, saving it. The crab was me, but I was actually a person rather than a puppet. It worked well because I was closer to the audience so I could prompt them when we asked how they could help protect the mangroves. I also had an easier time memorizing lines since I wrote the script. We also had a few strokes of brilliance in terms of backdrops and stage directions. Using a long table turned over on its side, we draped it in shiny green cloth, then used brown cloth twisted up in the middle that looked like a tree. Cactus, the girl playing the mangrove, then stuck only her head out on top during her part. She had a fake tree top stuck in her ponytail. It was hilarious (to us more so than to the kids). Then the hunter appears looking for a flamingo to hang on his wall, who is also a real person who entered from the back of the auditorium for dramatic effect. Eventually, he "fights" with the mangrove. However, the fight was the hunter punching the mangrove's head but the mangrove ducked or moved to the side. It was slapstick hilarious. It finally made the kids laugh. That was so satisfying. The hunter gets frustrated, the mangrove throws water on him, and he falls down and runs away.

Then we took the kids on a trip to the actual mangroves. A lot of parents also wanted to go with their kids, of course, so our bus ended up not being big enough. I spent about 40 minutes getting the bus over there, waiting for another truck which unhelpfully appeared completely packed with kids hanging off the trunk, and buying soda and crackers with the slow-paced municipality employees. First, we took the kids to a lookout where you can see a panoramic view of the mangroves. They were really fascinated by the amount of birds you could see up there. It was nice because most of the kids have been to the area, but never went to the lookout nor to look at wildlife, but instead just went to the beach area to bathe. As the volunteers led their groups in a game of "I spy" and told them about the rules (no throwing trash on the ground, no entering the water, no touching dead pelicans, stay with the group), I handed out cookies and soda, and coordinated the logistics. Then we went to a triangular-strech of beach with mangroves on the left where a flock of herons were resting. On the right was the ocean. First, the volunteers were supposed to do a "check for learning" by asking the kids questions they should´ve learned the answers to during the play. What are mangroves? Why are they important? What are some of the threats to mangroves? Volunteers who thought their group was especially well-behaved could then take their group to the actual mangroves to identify them. Then, the groups competed against each other in relay races on the flat sand. We did a crab walk, fox run (walk on hands and feet), and flamingo hop (one leg up). They loved it. After drinking more soda, we packed the kids up again and got them back to town. There, an art teacher coordinated a very detailed, formal drawing contest. The drawing contest idea was mine. Originally, I just wanted the kids to draw mangroves to reflect on what they saw. Simple stuff. Crayons and notebook paper. However, she took it to the next level, insisting that we have a variety of mediums like pencils, paint and crayons, and annoyed the hell out of me demanding more cups for paint, and complaining about how there weren´t enough supplies. I´m like, lady, what am I supposed to do about it now??? Feeling extremely exhausted, hungry and sick, I had enough of her demands (she had been pissing me off for the last two weeks, especially on my sickest days) and snuck away. Regardless, it was a great day.

Yesterday we did our third play. As I was trying to buy time because one of our actresses was late, I asked who had been to the previous two plays. A bunch of hands went up. I asked what they learned from each play and reviewed the lessons. For the most part, they were able to answer the questions perfectly, so that was a relief. We made the kids run around again, which they love and so do the moms. All in all, it turned out really well, despite a huge lack of preparedness on the volunteers´ part.

I definitely feel like I know the community better now, and they know us. The kids are more comfortable approaching me and like to ask how to say their names in English or other words. Now that the Festival is almost over, I don´t know what I´ll be doing with myself! I plan on resting for a week to get my health back. There is a possibility I might take advantage of the Asian Diversity group in PC Perú that offers free vacation days to go to Lima to celebrate Chinese New Year with the other PC Asians in Chinatown to eat dim sum. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, writing "dim sum" makes me want to go even more. However, I feel like I have been to Piura so often, I feel guilty about leaving my sight again so soon. We´ll see.

Speaking of dim sum, I´m hungry. Hopefully I´ll be able to eat more than jelly sandwhichs, which was my dinner last night.

I´m losing my voice

I have been incredibly busy this past week coordinating details and running errands for the Mangrove Festival which starts THIS MONDAY. My counterpart also decided to leave to Lima this week. Good timing. Ahhh, why did they arrange the Festival to fall a week after the Christmas/New Year´s holiday??? We just started publicity late in the afternoon Friday. Hmmmm...I see where my most important role will be next year: PLANNING AHEAD OF TIME AND STAYING ON SCHEDULE. Unfortunately, most of the week I spent writing oficios, which are highly formal government documents of communication. A lot of hassle about nothing, really. I don´t know why they made me write them, of all people. Talk about stress and misplaced use of personnel.

Yesterday, I sat at the table with the mayor, a biologist who studies my mangroves, the director of the regional Natural Resources government office (INRENA), and two of the mayor´s aides for a press conference. Even though I had prepared a few short statements just in case, I was extremely relieved nobody asked me to speak or answer a question except one-on-one. Then we went to the visit the mangroves. It was more beautiful than last time. We saw a flock of a few hundred white birds fly up in a fluttering cloud from the ocean to the sky. I also decided that the mangroves are too far for me to bike to and be happy about it. Darn. On our way out, the INRENA truck decided to do some off-roading and got stuck in sand. We spent 15 minutes trying to get it out until a John Deere tractor came and pulled it out like a piece of cake.

Then after eating ceviche with the reporters, I went to Piura with the INRENA folks. We went postering. Ah, it reminded me of the good ´ol PIRGIM days, especially when the gray-haired engineer began tearing down other people´s flyers so we could use their thumbtacks to hang up our poster. And sticking posters in doors and other not-for-poster-use areas.

By the time we finished, it was dark. I was tired and starting to feel sick, so I stayed overnight in Piura. As usual, I was able to find other volunteers staying in Piura. We ate chifa, Peruvian-Chinese food, which is always an awkward experience for me. I know everyone´s like "oh, the China like chifa." It was decent.

This morning, I woke up from a terrible night´s sleep due to an abundance of mosquitoes and heat in my room at night, and now I´m losing my voice. Which is really unfortunate because I have to do three plays this week. The one I´m writing now has a migratory bird cameo that only says "Yo no sé" because it is a gringo bird from the United States. I hope it will make the people laugh.

Party all night...and every day

Contrary to what I thought, New Year´s is a bigger holiday here than Christmas. On December 31st, I was incredibly bored during the day. Feeling bored here leads to borderline depression, so it was almost like a repeat of December 24th, except worse because I didn´t have any pants I wanted to get dirty on a hike and the internet site was closed without warning. However, at night things picked up for the best.

At 9:30PM I participated in yet another march, this time to the town´s auditorium. The mayor then gave a 2 hour speech recounting all the public works the Municipality did during 2005 and damn, it took about an hour. I was completely overwhelmed with everything they have done in just a year: installing lighting, paving roads, creating potable water systems, installing drainage systems, improving infrastructure within the soup kitchens and schools, planting trees, building plazas, throwing cultural and academic events, and more. This was really exciting to me because nothing seemed to be a frivolous expense and the Municipality is obviously working with a sizeable budget, which means my ideas may not be limited by money. And then the Mayor got really fired up and talked about how they have been fighting in court against a North American petroleum drilling company that drills within the municipality but doesn´t employ many local people whatsoever. They just won their case, which means this company has to pay them twice as much as they had in the past, which is amazing news that made everyone cheer. There is another drilling company working off the coast of the mangroves, I think Peruvian, that they´re fighting against as well. In addition, I learned that the Municipality isn´t privatizing their entire water system but rather are maintaining ownership of the water system itself. However, they are privatizing the management of the water distribution and fee system. There are 4 different companies competing for the management rights, which is the ideal situation that benefits community members because competition means lower prices for consumers. Having a private company manage the fee system also may lead to greater efficiency of service.

Hearing all of that made me excited as well as nervous: the bar is set pretty high already for me! I have so much respect for this Municipality and the Mayor. It just seems that they´re doing almost everything "right". Then, the Mayor started talking about the future. That is when he talked about how the mangroves are so important an American has come to live with us. "Ingeniera Carolyn Hwang del Cuerpo de Paz y la Universidad de Michigan!" and thus, U of M got a plug down here, and I am now an engineer. Then I got to stand up and wave to the 300+ people from town gathered there, so now more people know who I am. Good stuff.

Then we ran outside and there were hundreds more people gathered there waiting to start the party. A 10-piece band was there to help us ring in the new year. We all received 12 grapes and a little shot of cheap champagne from the Municipality. As it got to be midnight, we ate the 12 grapes for good luck, chugged the champagne and ran around giving everyone and their mother a kiss on the cheek and a "Feliz Año Nuevo." Unfortunately, I didn´t receive the wise advice from our Medical Officer until today. However, next year I am definitely doing the following:

3) If you want to travel more next year, you have to run around your block with a travel bag (a maleta). If you travel with a mochila, you can do it with that (I think). Here in Lima people do that a lot, and you see at midnight many people running around the block with maletas de viaje. Its fun and funny. (I have done it many times).

4)Very Very Important. In Peru, the lucky New Year color is YELLOW. So you have to wear something yellow. Here in Lima people use a yellow underwear. You cant buy your own underwear, someone else has to buy it for you or it wont work.

He later sent this out in response to a few e-mails he received from volunteers:

You have to get a NEW YELLOW UNDERWEAR. Wearing the same underwear for a few days until it gets yellow DOESN'T WORK. Go get a new one.

Anyhow, next, I cursed myself out for forgetting my fully charged camera battery charging in my room so I missed some great photo ops of all the firecrackers we set off and this spinning firecracker thing. Following tradition, there were also many dummies representing the Year 2005 burning in the streets. As you can imagine, I think I have cancer now after inhaling all those carcinogens from the burning plastic. It was a pretty cool sight, and I´ll download photos to flickr soon. For some reason, I´m not getting this blog to upload photos.

To my dismay, my family then left the party. To my delight, we went home to eat turkey, hot chocolate and panetón. As we sat watching an operatic performance on TV I severely missed not watching the ball drop in NYC, hearing Aude Lang Sang and counting down to midnight. Later, we collected the extended family and headed to the huge party. I danced a lot, as the family likes to point out these days. However, the dancing is super tame. You´re apparently not supposed to touch the other person after a few seconds into dancing and then only our feet and arms move, really. We called it a night at 4:45AM.

The next day we ate more panetón for breakfast and at lunch we started drinking again. Then the 70+ year-old man who boards at our house said he wanted to dance with the “Señorita,” by which he meant me. So we moved everyone upstairs and 1.5 hrs later, people started dancing finally with more family members arriving. So that party went until 9:30PM.

And then the next day I went to a small birthday party of a family member. It started with about 11 people sitting around the table listening to my host dad lecture the birthday boy (who turned 18, I think) about the importance of studying to find a decent job. “Or else you´re going to be a fisherman, like me,” he said ridiculing his life´s work. He then proceeded to talk about how hard it is to be a fisherman and how it doesn´t bring in enough dough to satisfactorily raise a family. Well, happy birthday, birthday boy. At least I got to eat the cake this time.

Now it´s back to work. 6 more days until the Festival!!! Wish me luck, I need it.