A Glass Half Empty Can Occasionally be Half Full

So I love country music, most of you reading this are well aware of that fact and either love me or hate me for it. And people may say that its only music about trucks, fishing, heart break, or a dog…ok I’ll be the first to admit that that’s a good part of it, but some of its deep people!

One of my new favorite groups is Lady Antebellum, they’re a little new school for country, but have good instrumentation and the lead singer has a great voice—plus they write their own stuff, so that’s awesome. Well they have a new song called “I Was Here” and it basically embodies all the reasons I wanted to come to the Peace Corps. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I was coming to change the world, after all one person cannot change the world (no matter how highly some of ya’ll think of Obama—even he can’t do it, accept it). I didn’t come here thinking that I was going to drastically change everything for the better in my new community and everyone was going to love me and the Peace Corps. I’m a glass half empty kinda person on most days. I prefer to think of it not as seeing the world negatively, rather I’m a realist. I know my limitations and the limitations of man as a race. But with this song I get a glimpse of my glass half full side.

While I’m a realist, I have idealistic tendencies every now and again. I want to see change in the world, I want to help my community, I want them to like me and work with me to make our community better. And I think that this song just embodies how that change will be done.

You will notice me,
I’ll be leaving my mark like initials carved in an old oak tree
You wait and see
Maybe I’ll write like Twain wrote, Maybe I’ll paint like Van Gogh
Cure the common cold, I don’t know
But I’m ready to start because I know in my heart

I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better with the time that I’ve been given
And I want to try to touch a few hearts in this life
And leave nothing less than something that says
I was here

I will prove you wrong if you think I’m all talk
You’re in for a shock because this dreams too strong
And before too long
Maybe I’ll compose symphonies; Maybe I’ll fight for world peace
Cause I know it,s my destiny to leave more than a trace of myself in this place

I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better with the time that I’ve been given
And I want to try to touch a few hearts in this life
And leave nothing less than something that says
I was here


And I know that I will do more than just pass through this life
I’ll leave nothing less than something that says:
I Was Here

After all we were told a story of a Peace Corps Volunteer in India. After the end of his service when asked if he felt that he was productive he replied that he didn’t accomplish anything, he failed as a volunteer. Many years later, the Indian government was doing a dental health survey, and found one small pocket of their population that had wonderful dental health. When they asked the local population why they had such good teeth an old man replied:

“There was this American who lived here years ago that would brush his teeth in the public water well every day, he told us it was a good idea.”

He made a difference, he was there. Guess I’m seeing things a lil more Half Full now a days.

a few photos that are un related just to jazz this thing up

Me and Erica decided to make salsa on the floor of our hotel room



Erica digging into the salsa and chips a la super market

Actual Conversations...AKA too Good to Make Up

(With Peace Corps Medical Doctor)
Me: Hi Suni, its Jenny Schwartz.
Suni: Hi Jenny, tell me, how are you?
Me: actually right now I’m pretty sick
Suni: Tell me what is happening with you
Me: Well, my stomach really hurts, especially after I eat and it’s been going on for about 3 days.
Suni: What kind of pain are you having? Is it a cramping or a stabbing?
Me: When I’m not eating it’s a cramping, when I am eating its stabbing.
Suni: When are you having these pains while you are eating or within 30 minutes of eating?
Me: While I’m eating and it lasts for usually an hour after eating
Suni: Are you having diarrhea?
Me: no
Suni: Are you with vomiting?
Me: no, but after eating I feel like I’m going to, I just hate throwing up, so I have managed not to so far
Suni: hmm… Are you with a fever?
Me: Um I don’t think so
Suni: Do you have pain in your head?
Me: No
Suni: Hmm, this is abnormal. Ok, do you have a health post in your town?
Me: Yes
Suni: With a lab?
Me: Yeah, but the lab tech is on vacation until the day after tomorrow
Suni: …hmm, ok well if you can wait until he gets back have him do a stool sample and a blood test and get me the results.
Me: ok
Suni: Here is what I want you to do for me. Take your temperature every 4 hours and if it is high please call me back immediately. Also, please eat just bland food, potatoes, rice, and chicken soup. Where are you exactly?
Me: In the pay phone in my town
Suni: No, where is your site
Me: Oh, Nanchoc, Cajamarca, but I’m closer to Chiclayo than Cajamarca City
Suni: Oh, ok. Do you have internet in your site?
Me: Haha, no. No internet
Suni: Then I will call your cell phone in 2 days to hear your results
Me: Suni, we don’t have cell phone either
Suni: Oh, ok. Then I will call this number back in 2 days
Me: They usually don’t come by to tell me when I have a phone call, so I will just come back here and call you when the lab guy gets back and has my test results…assuming we’ll still have electricity in 2 days.
Suni: Ok… well I will be waiting to hear from you and your results.
Me: Thanks Suni
Suni: Feel better

Date of conversation: 24th of Feb.
Date of Lab guy’s return: 26th of Feb
Results of lab tests: TBA

(With Nanchoc Health Center’s Doctor—translated into English)
Dr. Freddy: what are you working on?
Me: My Diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: you’re working on your own diagnostic?
Me: Yeah I just talked to Walter in the lab about a few things to help me with my diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: why isn’t Walter doing your diagnostic?
Me: Because it’s my job to do my own diagnostic, all the Peace Corps people are doing one in their city
Dr. Freddy: wait, you all have to do your own diagnostic? Why aren’t the lab guys doing it for you?
Me: Because it’s a way for us to get to know our community
Dr. Freddy: …having a parasite is a way to get to know your community?
Me: What?
Dr. Freddy: You need to have a parasite to get to know your community better? And you all have to do the lab diagnostic yourselves? Those are weird rules
Me: umm Dr. Freddy, I was talking about my community diagnostic, remember I asked all those moms those questions…I just wanted to stuff on parasites from Walter.
Dr. Freddy: Oh, so Walter is running your parasite diagnostic, not you?
Me: yeah, I’m not a lab technician
Dr. Freddy: yeah…I’m going to go eat lunch now, my head hurts
Me: ok, I’ll be working on my diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: [rolls his eyes]

Final Lab Results: no parasite
Next Step: wait and see if it gets better on its own…my mom’s going to pass an egg over me tomorrow (don’t ask it’s a Peruvian get better thing…)

I'm A Big Girl Now!

It’s Feb 17th, and as most of you know IT’s MY BIRTHDAY!! Woo. Ok so I tried to play down how much I really love birthdays here in Peru because a Peruvian birthday party involves a lot of drinking, dancing, eating, and drinking…and usually last until 6am. So to try and avoid

1. Drinking—I don’t drink in my site, everyone here thinks I hate the taste of beer…well it’s not all a lie. I hate the taste of Peruvian beer, so that makes the white lie ok right?
2. Dancing—I don’t dance here either…well ok I really don’t dance much in the states either, so that’s not changing much. Besides Cumbia and Whiano (the popular music here) aren’t very interesting to dance too. Think about your 5th grade graduation party, where everyone danced by moving side to side and throwing in the occasional twirl or hand jive…well that’s Peruvian Cumbia dancing…yeah fun.
3. Staying awake until 6am—I’m almost always ready to fall asleep by 10pm. It’s a combination of I’m now an “old fogie” (ok so 23’s not that old…but still) and the possible parasite that I’ve got making me really tired. (the parasite may or may not be a joke…we’ll find out in a month when I get back to civilization to see a doctor that speaks English)

But to give you all a rundown of my Peruvian Birthday:

At 5:30am I woke up to the sound of our donkey hee-hawing his way into the Guinness Book of World Records for the loudest donkey. And at 5:31am my host dad fled the house running in his PJs (not only was the donkey yelling, he was making a break for it—he’s notorious for running away). So its way before dark, the sun usually rises around 6:20, and I’m in no mood to leave my bed, I have a rule where no matter how early I wake up, I stay in bed until I see a lil sun (usually 6:20)—unless of course I have to use the bathroom (I drink a ton of water here), then I’ll get up before.

But at 6:00 my host niece who’s still here (they planned to only visit for 4 days, that was 3 weeks ago…) began singing “happy birthday” in English…well ok it was “hoppi berduy a wuu” because her English isn’t that great and she’s only 5, so I’m going to go ahead and just give her credit for trying. She entered the room quite literally with a bang—my door tends to stick, so in the process of opening it she slammed to the floor, still singing might I add. What a trooper. But after a few minutes of struggling with my mosquito net she finally managed to crawl into my bed with me to “descansar por un ratato” (that’s to rest for a while.) she apparently woke up at 5 asking her mom if it was time to sing me happy birthday.

7:00 we finally decide to leave my bed (and I notice that she had her shoes on and I now need to do laundry because my sheets are COVERED in mud…) and help cook for the people who eat at my house. Because today we didn’t have the normal 14 guys working at the mine. Oh no. They had diminished to 6 yesterday, and I was super excited to only have 6 of them eating at the house—less work, less smell. But at 7:15 the boss man of the mine came saying that he found 16 new guys to work until the end of the month, and they’d all be here at 8:30 to eat. Then at 7:45 the head of the electric company that’s been trying to get us constant electricity came to say that they wanted 18 lunches…so let’s do some math people. 14-8=6, 6+16=22, 22+18=40 yeah count it, 40 people eating at my house…oh wait. 4-+Dona Julia+Don Jose+Ingrid+Isabela+Don Alfonzo+Me=46. Did I forget to mention that my host mom is also a miracle worker?

8:55 (aka 8:30 in Peruvian Time) all the 22 guys from the mine show up to eat their breakfast. They leave within 15 minutes of being served…it’s literally like watching pigs eat, food is flying, chicken bones and thrown, rice is dropped, soup is spilled…its just a mess.

9:55 all the plates and tables are now clean and Dona Julia can start preparing lunch for the army. I head to the health center to say hi to my friends. They are all waiting and have a Birthday Hug waiting in addition to a Brittney Spears CD…they think that all Americans love her…so I acted surprised and happy…it’s going to make a great spatula to take paint off a wall one day, just not a good listen. But I pass the morning with the Health Center, half talking about the united states, half way talking work (it’s my birthday so they said I can’t talk much work)

12:00 I return to help prepare for the frenzy. I put all the cups out (we only have 20, thank goodness that they were already planning to eat in shifts) and plates and put napkins with the spoons (yeah we only eat with spoons) and then at 12:30 the “wave of smell” as my host sister put it, arrived. These dudes stink! But I’m not going to focus on that because this is about my birthday
By 3 we were all done with the cleaning and I had time to make my cake!!! I fixed a Peruvian Carrot Cake, it’s Peruvian because the ingredients are different, so the taste is a lil different.

At 5 my host mom and sister began cooking supper for the miners, and a special supper for me—Aji de Gallina!!!! Aka my favorite food here in Peru, it’s shredded chicken in an pepper, bread, cheese, and milk sauce served with potatoes and rice (yeah its got a ton of carbs in it, but I LOVE IT!)

8:00 my birthday party! All of the Health Center came over to my house to eat my favorite food, with my favorite cake from the states, what a great combination. We sat and talked and joked around for a few hours. Mainly talking about funning instances when they weren’t able to understand me during my time here and the confusion that the misunderstandings caused. But all and all a good time was had, and by 11 my host family and I were washing dishes so we could head to bed.

What a great birthday. I know that my mom and dad (and probably brother) missed me on my birthday, I for sure missed them, but my Peruvian family took really good care of me and went to extra lengths to make sure that I had good food to eat.

Learning Things...Medically

So as much as I don’t like the guys that work at the mine above my town, I must thank them for today’s lesson:
How to sew stitches.

Now before Michael Hirsh (the director of Peace Corps Peru) has a conniption and kicks me out of the program. I didn’t learn on a person! Let me tell the story before I get kicked out for practicing medicine (cause I totally didn’t on a person)

Ok so the story is needed. I was discussing how smelly these men at the mine are with the pharmacy technician in my town as we were collecting materials to go to the neighboring towns as the king of smelly walks in covered in blood accompanied by our lab technician who was about 3 seconds from fainting. We won’t get into why our lab technician can’t stand the sight of blood… but yes, this guy has a 6 inch gash in his arm and in his wisdom decided to tie off his arm with his shoe lace so that he could walk the 45 minutes from the mine to the Health Center (yeah the mine didn’t want to take him in the truck because it’s a waste of gas…).

So I had 2 reactions to this sight: 1. Oh dear lord that’s a ton of blood why did we have blood sausage for lunch, and 2. Cool! So I decided to let the emotions in reaction 2 take the wheel and follow the doctors into the exam room to do my usual helpful tasks (hand them the stuff they need or hold an IV because I’m taller than they are…basically act like furniture). Due to the fact that we didn’t have electricity and I’m an amazingly prepared Peace Corps volunteer I was asked to put my headlamp on and stare at this guys gash while holding an IV above my head. Yes I hope you all have a mental picture going…because I can assure you that it was a funny sight. Oh I forgot to mention this was at 7pm, aka time that the sun goes down in Peru so that’s why the Gringa’s headlamp was needed. This guy walked in with a 6in long, penetrating stab basically from a rock that shattered as he was picking it up. After getting the rock pieces out of the flap of skin (yeah it was cool to watch, just glad it wasn’t my arm because our numbing injection wasn’t helping the guy too much at this point). But I’m watching the doctor sew this guy up and let me tell you people it’s not as easy as it looks on Grey’s Anatomy people…at least not with hard Peruvian campo skin. Well apparently had a look of awe or “algo asi” (something like that) because the doctor asked me if I wanted to try. After explaining that we weren’t allowed to practice medicine in the Peace Corps (aka do anything doctor-y) and the look of “oh god please no” fell off the injured guy’s face Dr. Alex said afterwards I’d get to practice. I had no clue on what at this point--I was just too busy staring at this gash to provide light to question.

So after a good 45 minutes of sewing (this was a killer gash) and the guy’s all clean and “juntando” (together in one piece) and we explained that “no sir you cannot go back to work right now, you have a 6 in penetrating STAB wound from your work and you’re whole hand is numb…of course you can’t go back to work today you idiot” (ok we didn’t say it exactly like that…but it had that effect) Dr. Alex said it was time to practice. Me and the pharmacy technician decided to follow suit, with equal “what’s about to happen” stares. We close up the health center (it closes at 7 anyways) and went to a neighboring house where Dr. Alex asks about the ½ kilo of chicken that he asked for that morning (yeah you have to order your chicken in advance here so they can kill it and clean it) and walked back with his chicken to the Health Center.

Now to my Grey’s Anatomy fan friends, think the Christiana trying to help Burke with his hand episode. The Doctor cut the chicken to the bone and handed me a pair of gloves and the (cleaned) rest of this guys “sewing kit” and proceeded to instruct me on how to sew a stitch. It’s a lot easier on a chicken than it appeared to be on a person—so that made things easier. I don’t think it was the worst sewing job ever done in the history of the world…but it certainly wasn’t the prettiest. But the doctor said if the chicken wasn’t already dead and dismembered in 4ths that he probably would have survived with my sewing job…so that’s cool.

And no mom and dad, this does not mean I want to be a doctor—sorry, you’ll still have to look at Mike for the money in the family to pay for the really good nursing home for you guys. I’m the do-gooder—there’s never any money in that.

Knee Deep In Mud

A month into the rainy season has taught me a few things:
1. Never take a sunny day for granted. When you see sun, you should wash your laundry, even if you don’t need to that day, because you never know when you’ll see sun again.
2. You clothes can take up to a week and a half to dry.
3. My water-proof gortex boots, pants, and jacket were among the smartest of my packing choices.
4. It doesn’t really matter how good the traction is on your boots, 5 steps into walking you’ll have 2 pounds of mud affixed to the bottom no matter what.
5. Sometimes chacos are a better bet than boots. When you know you’ll sink knee deep into the mud, chacos are easier to wash off, and you can wear them wet unlike boots.
6. Peruvians have small feet, and I can’t find knee high rain boots in my size.
7. Bugs hate the rain too…so they go into hiding in your room if you don’t shove cardboard under your door when you’re not in your room. (oh and this system makes it a pain to use the bathroom at night)
8. It can still be 110 degrees outside when it’s raining. Yeah, that blew my mind too.
9. No one cares if you bring mud into their house, because their shoes are covered in mud too.
10. Electricity is amazing, and it sucks to live without it for 2 weeks when you have work that needs to get done on your computer.
11. There is a Peruvian radio station that plays American music (I discovered this when my iPod battery died and I couldn’t charge it due to lack of electricity)
12. Head Lamps are one of the greatest inventions ever made.
13. It is possible for a water pipe to get washed away by rain (…ironic no?) and leave a town waterless for a week.
14. It is possible to take a shower in the rain here in Peru and to prove it we have an outside shower stall (4 plastic sheets hanging from a tree) that I have used. It just takes a lil patience to get the shampoo out.
15. Ducks love the rain because it turns our patio into a lake, and they can ACTUALY swim in the water at times…it’s that deep.
16. It’s acceptable to call your pants that are covered in mud and have been worn for the past 4 days in a row your “good pants.”
17. Some days you can cross the river to make it out to Chiclayo…some days you can’t. Last week was a can’t, hopefully tomorrow is a can.
18. Brown water can be drunk. You just have to put it in a big bucket, wait a few hours for the crud to settle, pour out the stuff that looks clean into a towel over another bucket, and then boil it. And in my case cross my fingers that I still don’t get sick…eww.

Just a few things I’ve come to find over the past month. The rainy season’s been a very interesting time here in Nanchoc, and I’m told there’s another 2 more months to go…let’s just hope that the river plays nice and I can make it out for Reconnect in March, because I miss my Peace Corps people and wanna play on the beach with them!

Its a Hard Knock Life

First of all I just wanted to apologize to the people that actually read these blogs (well I hope there are people who read these, or I’m basically talking to myself…eh oh well) about how long it’s been since I’ve been able to post. I usually only make it into civilization once a month. But the good news is this blog should be good!

Well where to start, oh, the phones. Ok so as I’m sure I’ve told most of you, or possibly written before, there is not internet or cell phone at my site. Therefore every member of my group here in Peru has probably forgotten that I exist since I can never communicate. And up until Jan 17th we had phone service in my site…yes I said up till. On Jan 17th at 9:30am the mayor cut all of the phone lines to Nanchoc because there are some people who haven’t paid their bill in a year (yeah Peruvians aren’t real good about setting deadlines.) And the gringo in town (me) was the first to discover that there was no cell phone reception when I tried to be an amazing sister and use an ENTIRE phone card to call my brother’s cell phone and say happy birthday. At first we thought just the Health Center’s line got cut. The line hangs low in the road and if a stranger to town passes by with a load too high—snap, there goes our line. But no, everyone’s phone line was cut. And this of course doesn’t affect our lovely mayor, because he doesn’t live here, he’s lives in Chiclayo (yeah go figure)but up until a few days ago, (like Feb 1st) we were without any means of communication, then after a mini riot the mayor was forced to open the only pay phone in town. So I used a whole phone card to call home and let the rents know that I’m not dead on the side of a Peruvian road. (Sorry you weren’t home mom!)

Hmm what else is new? Oh yeah, I had my bosses come to visit me yesterday (the 4th) just to check in and make sure that I’m still alive. We had a charla (educational session) with mothers of children under the age of 3 about food preparation and nutrition. It went pretty well. I didn’t give the charla, the Health Promoters that I’ve been helping train gave it, their first charla! I was so proud, they did amazing. But my bosses seemed pleased with everything, except for the rain (it’s been raining for the past week straight). And thanks to Mom and Terry, Tommy, and Ted for the magazines that you all sent, I shared the wealth and passed them along with my bosses to give to the other volunteer’s they’ll see this week. Besides most of them had articles on Obama and nothing else…and we all know I don’t want to talk about that.

But the highlight of the past few weeks has been that this week my host mom finally came back from Lima!! So I don’t have to be Chef Jenny anymore! How wonderful. And she didn’t come back alone, she brought my Host sister Isabel and her daughter Ingrid. Isabel is awesome; she’s 25, it’s been really great to have someone my age in the house. And Her daughter is…well timid. This girl is afraid of everything: Donkeys, cows, goats, chickens, roosters, ducks, and insects…yeah and she’s in the campo of Peru, we’re surrounded by these things. The poor girl. Today was a very traumatic day for a 5 year old. The day started off with my dad killing a goat because we have 14 people eating at our house every day (another story I’ll get to in a second), and Ingrid thinks that killing animals is wrong…god I know, she’s crazy. Its Discovery Kids fault—the show with the daughter of the Crocodile Hunter says not to kill animals…or so I’ve been told a hundred times now as Ingrid’s eating her chicken…yeah I’m confused too. And she cried and stared with horror as I help Don Jose cut the goat into portions separate the “good internal parts” from the “bad internal parts” (yeah I had goat liver, lungs, and heart stew for breakfast this morning…it was as gross as it sounds). But as if that’s not enough trauma for an animal loving 5 year old…today when I was washing my laundry (on the only sunny day we’ve had in forever) I hear a death scream coming from the room where we keep the cuys (Guinea Pigs) and baby chickens and turkeys. So naturally I go running to see who is dying. Turns out it’s not who was dying, it’s what was dying. Ingrid was jumping into the room with the animals…and well…squished a baby turkey. And it was still alive, she had stepped on its butt, and its guts had shot out of its mouth. So naturally thinking of the tramitized child before the turkey I pick her up and leave the room, and my mom yells at me for not killing the turkey first…go figure. But it’s ok, I had the crying kid; she killed the turkey with her foot. So this sequence of events is obviously enough to send any kids over the edge. But as with any good story, that’s not the end of it.

So right now it’s Carnival here in Peru. Now I’ll be honest, I really have no clue what that means aside from an excuse for dirty old men to throw water at women and children walking in the streets. But on this ONE day without rain, as Ingrid and I walked to finish a mural I’m painting in the Health Center a group of boys threw a bucket of water with pig blood on us (yes intentionally). Ingrid started balling (for the 4th time today) as I started fussing out in a mixture of Spanish and English at these boys. Yeah ok so I still can’t fuss people out very well in Spanish. “F you” translates anger better than me saying “that’s just not nice” in Spanish. So as we return to the house to change…the rain starts back up. So As I’m tying this, my clothes are hanging on the line…and getting a second rinse cycle (well ok they never has a first since I wash by hand…but just go with it). So all in all, it’s been a hard day to be 5 years old.

And back to the 14 people eating at my house story. So above my town there is a Slate Mine that no one from Nanchoc wants to work, the people here would rather work their land, so the company brings in people from outside to work—and they of course need to eat. Since my host mom runs one of 3 “eateries” in town (and she’s the better cook) they are all eating here. These guys are pigs. I have no clue who the heck taught them to eat, but they need to go back for a refresher course. They somehow manage to get more food on the table or benches than in their stomach. But the only good part of them eating at my house is they all really think that I’m the 7th child of my host mom (the girls in the family are “gringo” in skin color—aka a lil more pasty than the average Peruvian). So heck yeah! I actually have passed off as a Peruvian at least until I talk…then it’s obvious that I’m either not from round here, or I’m just special...

Hello, I'm Mike Ross, And This is Dirty Jobs

Ok so I’m not Mike Ross, but I sure as heck have felt like him over the past few days. So I’d like to think that you all know what Dirty Jobs is (after all the people reading this are either friends or family and let’s face it, we love that show), but just in the case that one of you haven’t a clue: Dirty Jobs is where a man named Mike Ross travels the country looking for the Dirtiest Job. He doesn’t just look for the jobs, he does the job for the day, it usually involves animals (the animal itself or their poop), trash, or just a ton of dirt. Well as it usually goes, Mike tries to do every job while under the instruction of the actual person who has that job--the other dude/chick usually is WAY better at the job than Mike, and thus we have the comedic part of the show--Mike usually sucks at these jobs, well at least at first.

So back to my point, I have been Mike Ross over the past week or so. To set the frame, my host Mom is in Lima because her daughter is sick, so she has been gone for about 2 weeks now. Then there is the Flu that’s been going around my town (but thanks to my Flu shot a la Peace Corps, I’m still going strong) that took my Host Dad as its next victim this week. So Cleo (the professor that lives at my house) has stuck around this week to help me “run the house.” So I have a few interesting stories to go with the “running of the house” that is Dirty Jobs material…

First let’s start with Cows, they’re always on Dirty Jobs, so it just seems fitting. Well we are in the rainy season here, which has NOTHING on a rain NC summer, let me tell you what. It pretty much pours from lunch time till 3am, we have precious few hours without rain where Mr. Sun reminds us that he does exist…not that any work with cows is does while the sun is out. So Cleo and I walked the 1/3 of a mile to the cow pasture, a distance that should take maybe 10 minutes, 15 if we’re walking at a Peruvian pace…but we’re about shin deep in mud and my Chacos have become encased in mud, and Cleo has her flip flops in her hand cause they aren’t doing her any good on her feet. About 20 meters (yeah I think in meters now) from the gate Cleo eats it in the mud (hey its 5am and its hard to see, how was she supposed to see that rock?). Now my conscious had a short battle between laughing and helping, but it chose laughing while helping her up as the best route…well within 3 steps of helping her up, I fall into the mud. Now you all are probably thinking this is funny. Yes, that it is. But the clean bucket we had to carry the milk back in is now dirty. So we have to walk another 30 minutes (due to mud our pace was slow) to the river to wash off the bucket. We finally make it back to the pasture with a clean bucket, rope the cow, get some milk, and begin the dangerous trip back to the house…needless to say we came pretty dern close to crying over spilled milk. Not too dirty you’re thinking (well I didn’t have my camera to take a picture of how muddy we were) but it was funny.

Now pigs eat everything and anything…one of the reasons I usually try not to think about what any given pig here has eaten when part of it is on my plate during the day here…but our pigs, I know EXACTLY what they eat. Nasty watery leftovers/stuff that went bad/old burnt rice from the bottom of the pot, ect. And we store it in a bucket until it’s time to carry it in a jug to the farm house to feed the pigs. Now this usually is an easy job, but we had a ton of relatives pass through the other day so there was way more “pig water” (as we call it) than usual. And since Don Jose is sick, there was no Donkey to carry the heavy load…just a Jenny (which as Wendy and Leslie pointed out to me our freshman year means a female donkey…so it’s totally fitting). So I carried this 8Kg jug full of…muck…for 40 minutes because we were walking in the mud to the farm house. Then it’s Cleo’s job to give it to the pigs, because I just don’t like the smell. Well she didn’t realize how heavy the jug was and splashed the both of us with the pig water in the process of feeding the pigs. So we are now covered from head to toe in yesterdays nastiness, and to make it worse, my mouth was open so I had pig water IN MY MOUTH. Yeah, that’s Mike Ross material. To put insult to injury, since we smelled like pig water, the flies thought we were a walking birthday present during the 40 minute walk back to the house…

Then the Dog ate one of the ducks, and just left another dead for me to find...



Then today (Jan 22) we were all prepared to make chick peas to go with our rice and chicken…the only problem, this pesky little bug that loves to eat grains had beaten us to the idea and had put tiny little holes in probably 2/3 of the peas we had. So rather than admitting defeat like Don Jose and I said, Cleo decides to boil them for a while, kill the bugs, and pick out the bad ones. Great plan on paper…needless to say I was picking around chick peas with insects popping out of them all during lunch and trying my damndest not to bust out laughing and let the lunch guest in on our little secret. I’ve never examined my food so close before eating. But somehow the Senor that eats with us managed not to see the sea of insects that he was eating…thank god. Ok so not very Mike Ross, but funny.

Then for a not so dirty, but still alittle Mike Ross-ish moment. Cleo and I were pealing garlic (like 6 heads of it) to mash and store in an open container by our open wood burning stove (I need to work on that). And apparently I suck at pealing garlic at a Peruvian Pace…I thought I was doing pretty good…for every 1 I pealed, she had finished about 10. There goes my ego.

Well for now I’m heading up to the other pasture (yeah we have a ton of them) to go and grab some Wan abanas(I spelled that wrong…but I don’t know any other way), I’m about 99% sure it’s a bread fruit in English. A big ol green blob that’s got little white pods with seeds in the middle. Kinda tastes like yogurt…but not really at the same time. It’s a complicated flavor, but its amazing, so I’m going to go brave the mud to grab a few before the rain comes in.