another one...

Hello friends.

Sorry I have fallen back into my sporadic and rare blog posts. You’ll just have to deal with it. Plus I am sure you all have other things to keep you occupied during the gaps between updates. If this is not the case please find some kind of hobby soon.

I once again find myself sitting in my room with a little time to kill before the mid day potato feast. Things have been going well the last month or so with some promising “leads” on work projects, some cool travel time, and illnesses.

The entire environment crew from Peru 14 traveled to the northern coast in the department of Lambayeque for a week long in service training. It was a great trip, experience, and all that jazz. We were with our community counterparts for the first few days of the excursion, which made for a fun and slightly awkward mingling and sharing of ideas. We traveled to an amazing private ecological reserve known as Chaparri and got a personalized tour, discussion of how eco-tourism works, and see how various groups benefit from the tourism brought in by the reserve. If you have a spare minute (which I know you do because you are reading this blog) google search Chaparri reserve in Peru. It is a truly beautiful place inhabited by speckled bears, a number of bird species, snakes, foxes, and a ton of other exciting Peruvian wildlife. Check it out. The rest of our time was spent in the near by town of Chongoyape in various meetings and presentations form ourselves and the rest of the Peace Corps staff. All in all a great week with regards to training, seeing a new part of Peru, and more importantly hanging out with my other Peru 14 environment buddies. I returned to site a little over a week ago and hopped back into the routine of teaching, thinking, talking, and all that good stuff.

I’ve have been investigating the idea of bringing the municipal trash pick up service up the mountain to help eliminate to rampant burning and throwing of garbage. We are still in the initial phase of this (by that I mean thinking about it), but if it all works out if would be an awesome step in the right direction. We are also trying to coordinate to get some trash cans donated (yeah that would be a good first step right?) and some workshops on why burning plastic bottles in an enclose space isn’t the best method for disposal. Anywho, that’s the work situation. Pretty much a status quo if you will. The next few months however will keep me busy, both in and out of site. To start things off the Blank’s arrive in Peru in two short days (wed.) and we start that hilarious adventure. I am really excited for them to get down here, show them around the new homeland, and watch them watch me slaughter guinea pigs for lunch. So that should make for an exciting and uplifting week or so. It will be great to see the family and experience a different part of Peru with them. After the family trip I will be intertwined with some technical exchanges between the enviro crew here in Ancash and those in the highlands of Lima. That should be another fun few days to bounce ideas off each other, and see one another’s sites. Then to wrap things up we have tentatively planned a trek to research a new tourist trail system here in Ancash. We would be going with the Park Services and doing some work and trail maintenance along the way. Not a bad few weeks lined up eh?

And now to leave you all with a chuckle. This past week I went down to the town of Yungay to drop off some paper work with the municipality and pick up a few things. My host sister asked me to pick up a chicken for her to prepare and sell up here in the hills. Of course I agreed, I have brought back many a chicken, rabbit, etc on public transport before. Now here in Peru you don’t buy boneless, skinless chicken breast for 3.99 a lb. You can buy pieces already butchered or go with the whole deal. Most people opt for the whole deal; I mean you get all the bits and pieces that way…liver, feet, head, etc. So I picked up about a 3 kg hen in the market and instantly knew this bird was trouble. As the woman tried to weigh out the bird on the scale it proceeded to projectile defecate (that’s the cleanest I can put it) all over her. Then it hopped off the scale and we had to jam it into my little market bag. Trouble. So in the bumpy, crowded, hot old station wagon on the way back up the hill the damn bird decides to squawk its way out of the bag and start fluttering around and “making a mess” , if you will, in the trunk of this car. For those of you who have seen Borat….think of that subway seen. It was hilarious after the fact. However I had to awkwardly turn around and basically climb over an old Quechua woman and wrangle this stupid chicken back into its bag. Of course an escaped doomed piece of poultry doesn’t want to go anywhere without putting up a fight, so it was Peter vs. the chicken for a few minutes on the way up the hill. I finally got it all tied down and “safely” home (I think I intentionally tried to break its wing). The reaction from the rest of the car: nothing, just another normal trip up from the market. I can’t wait until my sister puts this little guy under the knife and fries up some chicken. I’m sorry but he deserves it. Anywho, that might not have been interesting or humorous for you, but I got a little chuckle out of it and I figured it was a good day-to-day story that could help illustrate my life down here. Well, that’s all I have for now. I need to go prepare a class and then anxiously await the arrival of the family.

I hope all is well wherever you may be and that this blog has successfully distracted you from a few minutes of work, studies, or just the day-to-day grind! Send me an update when you have a chance! Until next time…

Best,
Pete