Feria Day

My Family´s perrita, Petisa

So I now know what total mental exhaustion feels like. After an absolutely magical first week in which every day literally felt like a dream come true, my second week kicked off with some serious mental fatigue in a way that I´m not accustomed. I felt tired all day no matter how much I slept the night before (thankfully insomnia seems like a distant memory here), my brain would not allow me to form sentences that involved communication in ANY language and I became easily frustrated at pretty much anything that did not involve eating or sleeping. By Tuesday, I was literally walking around in a fog, stumbling into things and wandering into the wrong breakout sessions at the training center. Luckily, my brain began to take hold again by Wednesday, and by Thursday, I was feeling considerably better.

Another thing you should know. Internet in Santa Eulalia is spotty at best. My updates are few and far between not for lack of trying, but more for lack of consistent internet access. I haven´t quite ascertained the reason for the temperamental internet, but as you can imagine, it makes lengthy diatribes about my week difficult to upload.

This week ended on an extremely high note in which our amazing Peace Corps facilitators and staff threw a ¨feria¨ or fair to expose us to various Peruvian customs we might encounter at our placement sights. Before the Peruvian culture part, we were asked to design our own American part to the fair where we set up different stops exhibiting common American fair games. My group did ¨Chicken in the Henhouse¨ (I believe to be one of the best parts of the fair) and other groups did ¨Red-light, Green-light¨ and ¨Musical Chairs.¨ It might not sound as awesome as it was, but when you´ve been cramming 40 hours worth of language and cultural studies into your brain everyday for the last 13 days, a little break is pretty fucking amazing. And it actually was pretty fucking amazing, so there.

The Georgia Girls (Katie and Kelly) and I just before the Feria got started

After the gringo portion, the staff kicked off their addition by demonstrating this awesome dance where women dance provocatively with a piece of paper taped above their ass and the man dances behind her creepily with a candle trying to literally light her ass on fire. I´m not kidding. Possibly the best dance ever. After that, we got to torture a guinea pig, called ¨cuy¨ (pronounced KOO-ee) here, by surrounding it with numbered boxes with holes on the front of them. People stand around the cuy torture circle and place bets on which numbered box the cuy will go into. If said cuy goes into your numbered box, you get the prize that´s on top (things like cookies or fruit or some centimos). A box is placed over the cuy in the center of the circle and someone moves it around to agitate the cuy. Then the box is removed and the cuy runs around in circles trying to flee (or in our case, it just sits in the middle of the circle until someone prods it with a stick). As much as I had my reservations about cuy torture, I still threw in my 20 centimos to bet on some cookies (I didn´t win). After that, my Spanish teacher and another language teacher recreated this amazing ritual in which people from the Sierra region of Peru get really wasted on fermented corn beer, dance around in a circle wielding a machete and hacking away at a tree with prizes attached to it until the tree falls down and gets mobbed by those in attendance who take all of the stuff attached to it. We didn´t have real alcohol, of course, but it was still pretty amazing getting to skip around in a circle with my fellow compatriots and hack away at a tree branch dressed up like a tree. I have videos of a lot of this stuff, but the internet here is pretty freaking slow and it takes me about an hour to upload eight pics, so I´m afraid to hazard a guess as to how long it would take to upload a video.

Fake Tree with machete stuck in it before the hacking circle started



Apparently cuy are averse to the number three



The hacking tree



My Language class with my teacher, Edith, dressed in Sierra-style clothing




Chilling out next to the river post-soccer game sporting the Arsenal jersey



It was pretty clear that all of us needed a break like this because we were all running around like kids again and we didn´t want the fun to stop. So, once we were done wrapping up at the training center, I suggested we go play a game of soccer at the field close to my house. This precipitated a fairly impressive gringo parade down the street to where several other volunteers and myself live. We ended up playing a fairly hilarious and enjoyable game of soccer for almost two hours. Then we followed it up by going next door to another volunteer´s uncle´s outdoor bar to sit by the river and drink cervezas. All in all, it was a pretty amazing day to say the least.





Today we went to Lima for an excursion with our language groups. We got to see the President´s Palace and the Miraflores (read:touristy) district and practice asking random strangers questions in Castellano. Not much to say about Lima other than it´s pretty much like everything I´ve read about it: polluted, crowded and incessantly covered by a dense grey haze that completely suffocates any sunlight. Oh, and it´s fucking expensive. I´d like to go back with a more experienced person because I´m sure it´s a pretty cool city if you go to the right parts. Needless to say, my fellow compatriots and I were pretty happy to get back to quaint, quiet little Santa Eulalia.