Due to sisterly demand...

...a new entry, one month after the last.

I AM WORKIN ON:
- A small book of the birds that you can see in my mangroves. It´s for schools to use with their kids so I´m trying to make it cute, interesting and funny...but it´s not like my Spanish is perfect now, so we´ll see how it goes. The biologist I work with has a lot of editing to do...haha. I decided to do it because a) no one else was, b) the biologist is too busy, c) a lot of info about birds is in English, d) the teachers were asking for more info about the birds.

- June 5th is World Environment Day. We´re planning clean up campaigns in all the caseríos and my town itself as well as marches.

- Movie Night. Probably Finding Nemo or Ice Age. That is if I get my laptop (which I just brought over from the US!) to be able to play DVDs again.

- Getting high school kids to create their own environmental commercials. We already spoke to the local TV station and they agreed to film them and play them on TV. Not sure how it´ll turn out since I spoke with the communications and science teachers in one of the caseríos and they´re like, ok come back and we´ll let you know. So I´m not sure what that means -- if they understood my idea or if they like the idea or not. Peruvians around here are not very expressive, so it´s hard to know what they actually think.

- Still working on the "social network" idea, but it´s on hold until after June 5th or something.

- Preparing to translate for some eye doctors from a US NGO, Vision Health International. They´re going to provide free eye surgeries for people of extreme poverty who have correctable, yet debilitating, eye problems. One of my friends who did it last year said that he got to see a lot of the surgeries. And that there were all these old farmers coming in and not showing any signs of pain when they had a huge needle stuck into their eye. And then this 15-year old kid got the same thing and howled in extreme pain and nearly broke my friend´s hand. Shows how tough these old farmers are. And how being non-expressive is part of the culture. The most exciting part right now is that since I´m volunteering, 5 people from my town get to be recipients of this surgery. I´m working with the Centro de Salud to pick them from the 2 poorest towns in my District. It´s great because I don´t do too much with those schools, so now I have an in with the community. Hopefully I can visit these people afterwards and start projects with them. Gradual change that affects a lot of people is more effective to meet development goals...but being able to directly affect the lives of 5 people in a big way is going to be really rewarding.

- Us volunteers in Piura have a theatre group together. We´ll be premiering our first play in two schools in my town next week. It´s about this tiger that can´t do anything right and everyone, including his own mom, makes fun of him. Then he finds a guitar and starts rocking out, and everyone loves him, giving him a new burst of confidence. And then yours truly, Gaby la Gata Guapa (the hot cat) invites him to rock out at her birthday party. It ends in a rock song and dance number that I will be choreographing with Cactus...it´s about self-esteem. It makes me cry.

- Selecting 20 teachers for the first of 4 workshops on an experiential methodology of teaching kids about ecology, propagated by the Audubon Society. I´m working with an NGO in Piura, the biologist included. I´m supposed to already know all these teachers, which is not the case. I might know half. Hey, this site is really big. Apparently, by the 4th one I´ll be able to give the training myself. Yeah right. Each workshop is 4 days. Hopefully I don´t have to go to all of them. I won´t have any weekends left to do laundry and write the book!

OTHER PARTS OF MY LIFE:
- Hm. Well, I ate a caramel Cadbury egg today as a reward for finally washing my filthy sheets. That was delicious.

- The farmers are on work stoppage today, so the town is dead. In other areas they blocked the roads and stuff so now no cars can come through. I was hoping for some crazy antics and good photo ops, but everything is just calmer than usual.

- Mother´s Day involved the women drinking and dancing by themselves and shouting merrily and being the silliest I´ve ever seen them be. Then as the day progressed, the men got drunk, the women didn´t let themselves get drunk, and it got a little ridiculous. My host mom kept on telling Mila´s husband (Mila is one of my best friends here with the cute kids) to dance with "La China". I figured out today that she did that to stop him from drinking more, and dance instead. It was a bad ending to a happy Mother´s Day because he, like most fishermen around here, has an alcohol problem which leads to him becoming a violent bastard. He used to hit Mila, in front of his kids, too. Apparently this subsided once their daughter was born. No wonder the 8-year old boy, Edwin, is so quiet and introspective. He will just walk into my room and not say anything, even after I speak to him. He´ll just smile.

...Mila is going to give birth again this month. Hopefully, it´ll be a girl. If it´s a boy, it´s possible he´ll get violent again...Oh, and on another note, I stationed myself next to Mila and made sure she didn´t drink any beer. She didn´t want to but people kept on pushing it on her. Hmph. I might have to start a "no drinking if you´re pregnant" campaign!!

- To end on a better note, Saturday night the Municipality celebrated Mother´s Day by raffling out 300 presents to mothers. I was on the lineup to present the presents to the mothers, so I got to give them a little pat on the shoulder, the awkward greeting here if you don´t give a kiss on the cheek. Some kids did some dance numbers, which will inspire me when I choreograph the Volunteers´ hot dance number...

And that´s a month in a big nutshell.