Well, it's been a month

After I last wrote life turned into a deluge of activities;

I began teaching my weekly English classes (the one from the last blog was the class I taught before vacation). I really enjoy teaching, especially teaching languages, so it's been relatively easy for me to put together classes and time goes quickly while I teach. My kids are sweet, and some of them have been showing progress in English fluency already just by speaking with me. Though while I love teaching and my kids are good people, they tend to rarely do their homework, be late to classes, or not show up at all. For example, when we had class scheduled for the Friday before and Monday after Cutervo's 101st anniversary, no one at all showed up. It's been immensely frustrating at times, no matter how much I'm told that that's just how life works here.

I've been putting a good portion of hours into working with the Kutiri youth center. We now have a blog (kutiri.wordpress.com, go check it out!), and we've been getting some very helpful individual donations. We do game nights, educational charlas (workshops), art classes, movie nights, and yesterday we pulled together a rather large Halloween party. We got to show lots of Peruvian kids traditional Halloween stuff like bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, and dirt pudding--it was greatly successful, I'm so proud of everything Chris, Katherine and I have been able to accomplish. I even got to carve this crazy green pumpkin they've got here, the kids and my host family loved it. However, it's been exhausting (a lot of children talking to you in Spanish all at once will take it out of you), and sometimes difficult (that many children in a room at once is not usually orderly). But I really love working with the kids, and I know that the kids love our center. Why? 70 or more kids between 10-18 come EVERY NIGHT. We've hardly been open a month, so it's easy to see the need for constructive activities for Cutervan kiddos.


Baños del Inca

In between all of that, me and Chris took 3 days to travel to the nearest big city, Chota, for a despedida (or good-bye party) for the Peace Corps group that's leaving this week. It was fun to hang out with the volunteers, they've got so many stories in them, believe me. Afterwards, we traveled to the local capital Cajamarca (all of this was hours upon hours in busses mind you). There we bought games for the youth center with our grant money, enjoyed the local cheeses and some real Taiwanese food, and took a dip in the Baños del Inca hot springs. Cajamarca = seriously my favorite I've been to in Peru.



Other miscellaneous happenings: skinned a guinea pig (I couldn't kill it; I was very vividly reminded of why I am usually vegetarian), and got to participate as a judge for my school's food festival. The kids had to present in English, so we rated them on taste and English, and I tried 20 different traditional Peruvian plates, including cow hoof, cow stomach, and pig neck. My favorites are the fried bread and cuajada cheese with molasses, and a jam made from a fruit called berenjena. Other than those, I've been baking a lot--check out my favorite things at my new food blog here: Sojourner Food

Oh! And for other updates on our adventures (including lots of Halloween pictures with kids bobbing for apples, pizza, and oatmeal raisin cookies), check out the other Katie's blog here: http://illmeetyouinperu.blogspot.com/

It's like America...but South! (and an address!)

These past couple weeks have just flown.

I spent my time in Lima eating sandwiches from a restaurant called La Lucha (roasted meat with onion-lime salsa, ají pepper sauce, and fresh fruit juice on the side, sooooo good), and generally wandering all over the city discovering churches, parks, and shopping areas.





Most days I just walked around Lima alone because Chris spent the days at his medical examinations. I think my favorite day in Lima was spent walking to El Bosque Olivar, a beautiful little nature area in the San Isidro district. Chris, some other Peace Corps volunteers and I also were there just in time for Mistura, a yearly food festival held in Lima showcasing all the different foods from all over Perú. We stayed there for a solid 5 hours trying all the different foods!

Afterwards, we took a night bus (12 hours long) to Chiclayo, the biggest city close to Cutervo. We spent the day in Chiclayo just hanging out with our friend Rob, and even went to see Planet of the Apes. Then we boarded another night bus to Cutervo, for another solid 11 hours. I finally arrived in Cutervo at 6 in the morning, and we both went to Chris' host family's house and collapsed

Chris has been keeping me busy from the start, I've already taught my first English class to the kiddos (in Spanish! I didn't think I had it in me...), Chris now has a space for his youth center that I've been working on with him, and once vacations this week are over, I'll begin teaching my English classes daily. The kids are the most well behaved I've ever worked with, they answer my requests, work hard, and are in general peaceful...! It's a little strange, but welcome.



Other than that, I've just been running around meeting & greeting and hanging out with Chris' host family. I have an apartment as a part of my English teaching job, but Chris' host family made their house available for me to stay in as well, so we've worked out a way for me to stay with the family. They are truly such kind, warm, and welcoming people that I already feel like part of the family. So, rather than furnishing my own barren apartment, I'll get to learn more language and culture from a host family, which is always better.

Also, today we climbed up to the white sand beach in the mountain Ilucan just above the city and got to see part of enormous span of Andes mountains that we're living in. It's been raining a lot, so we haven't made it to the top yet, but I'm sure that it's breathtaking. And we had 43 kids show up for Chris' first youth center activity, a movie night where we ate popcorn, drank soda, and watched Finding Nemo :)

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
If you'd like to send me a postcard, letter, package or watermelons with postage (which I would like very much!), please send it to...

Pasaje Yoyo Flores 180
A la familia Espejo Sanchez
Cutervo, Cajamarca, Perú

Please keep in mind that packages must be under 2 lbs and in an envelope for them to come to Cutervo! Otherwise they'll go to Chiclayo ELEVEN HOURS AWAY to go through customs!

Now to leave you, here's a picture of a cute alpaca!

9 Days in Perú

Up to today I've been to and through 4 Peruvian cities and towns--

My lovely Chris showed me around Lima for the first two days; we stayed in Miraflores (the really, expensive tourist part of town), where we saw the main square, a museum on food (knowing me and Chris, how could we not?), and the coast.





Then we took a 16-hour bus from Lima to Arequipa (it was an overnight bus so I was knocked out for most of it thank god), then went straight to our hostel...where we had the room at the very height of all the churches, so we had one of the best views of downtown and the mountains and Volcán Misti (part of the Andes range).

In Arequipa we tried all sorts of foods (amazing ceviche, anticuchos (grilled cow's heart), queso helado (don't know what it is but it's like reeally tasty ice cream). We also got to see "Juanita the Ice Princess", the most intact mummy they've found in this part of the Andes range. She was a child sacrificed to appease the gods after a volcano had erupted. The exhibit was really interesting, though they were so set on preserving the mummy by keeping the lights low that you could barely see her. You could see all the artifacts they found with her though, which were fascinating. We also found some tremendous Peruvian chocolate and Argentinian wine (a little under $5 a bottle), and some new Peruvian friends who we met in their alpaca clothing store, which one of them showed us where to buy tamales and told us some fantastic stories about Peruvian culture and history.

From Arequipa, we left for Colca Cañon, where the deepest cañon in the world, Cotahuasi, is. We passed through Chivay, where we got to try alpaca meat and see the beautiful embroidered clothing that the women there wear, then stayed the night on the edge of the cañon in a town called Cabaconde. We woke at 6am and started out with our packs on our backs for the cañon. It was a very odd experience for me, since when I'm going climbing, I'm used to going up first, not down then up. So the second day was a little more difficult since we were already sore from walking 8 hours the day before and had to go up the length of a very, very steep cañon. But, proud to say it, we made it to the top in 2.5 hours, passing others who left an hour before us. There were places for us to stay in the cañon, so we walked in the first day and out the next. Fortunately, we just barely made the 9am bus, which was the only one we could have caught to make it back to Arequipa in time for our bus to Lima...luck is on our side!






Now Chris just has medical examinations and training in Lima, so I'll be hanging out here for 4 days, then we'll head up to where I'll be staying put--Cutervo.

Till then, hasta luego!

¡Perú!

It's August, which means that it's time to take off again! Next destination: Peru!

First, I'll be stopping in NYC for 9 days to see friends and family, then August 25th I'll be in Lima (after a stopover in Columbia).

A little information about where I'm going...

I'll be living in Cutervo, Cajamarca Peru. It's in the North part of Peru, located in the Andes Mountains and near the base of the Amazon river. Peru is quite huge, I'll be closer to Ecuador than to Lima.




There, I'll be working as an English teacher for a local school called Data Mundo, and I'll also be helping my boyfriend Chris with his Peace Corps assignment of building a youth center and doing activities for kids.

The future will be full of potatoes, llama hats, and Spanish speaking! I'll be writing my next blog when I've finally arrived :)

Today 今日

Today, さ, today is, ね
Wandering the Tokyo temples, よ
Ambling slowly with my brimming burdensome pack
In company with graveyards and trees ample with 柿
　　　　　　（牡蠣じゃなくて柿）
Wending, in a leisurely and unsure fashion
through cold back-streets and gem-stone stores
To 大福、to よもぎもち
（一番美味いよ！）
To the historical shack, to Ueno (winter sweet potato roasted)
the lecture about myself given by an aged Japanese man
History museum , head hazy nap creeping in the quiet couch on my weary worn soles
And nearly crawling, back throbbing, to the ryokan
to the brown bathwater and old women cleansing and

then darkness よ
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 That was Tokyo





(http://lordessucchan.deviantart.com/art/today-237898699)

終わり

On the tail end of my trip to Japan, I travelled with my parents to Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, and Okinawa. It was a rather busy 2 weeks, but we certainly got to enjoy a lot of famous places. We were also treated to fantastic hospitality by our former host students, Miki and Hiroko. Plus it was quite the experience being in Japan for the New Years, because that is just like our Christmas--it's a big deal.

But now I am back in Denver, and I've been attending my classes in English again. I truly, truly miss Japan, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that I could still be there. But the fact of the matter is that I must graduate first. And not only that, Japan is rather removed from the line of work I wish to enter. It is incredibly difficult to integrate into Japanese society without having lived there for years upon years and being fluent in Japanese, and even then you are probably just teaching English (not something that particularly strikes my fancy). So, as much as I love Japan and Japanese, that will most likely always be a hobby or vacation for me. Nevertheless I am just so thankful for this opportunity to have traveled there for close to free, and all of the incredible new lessons the study abroad experience had to offer me.

Stay tuned for the next trip, but until then it's time for me to buckle up and finish my degree!

Wrapping the year up...

A week until Christmas, and school is still in session for me--quite the difference from being free after Thanksgiving as I have been the past couple years. But I already finished all my finals but my Japanese test tomorrow, which hopefully will go smoothly.

All the IES trips are done, so I haven't done much travelling. Mostly I've just been moseying around Nagoya trying to get a fill of my favorite things before I leave. This includes delicious Japanese food, shopping at Oosu Kannon market, going to en-nichi (or good day, a farmer's market-like affair) at the local Buddhist temple Koshoji, and haunting my favorite izakaya with good friends. The other day, since I had free time I rode my bike down to Heiwa Koen, a huge park full of walking trails with a gorgeous view of the Japanese Alps, next to a rolling cemetery. It was a beautiful, clear and sunny day, absolutely perfect for a long bike ride. I enjoy those peaceful times by myself to see the beauty of the place where I am living.

Soon it will be Christmas, and I feel it will be a warm one since the weather is so mild that the leaves are still turning. I'm planning on having a small Christmas with a couple friends from America, my German friend Maria, and Maria's German friends. We're going to make Christmas cookies and eggnog and celebrate until I leave Christmas evening for a night bus to Tokyo where I'll meet my parents.

When my parents come we'll spend two weeks traveling around Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and Okinawa. We'll be spending the New Year celebrating in Kyoto! And in Kobe and Okinawa we'll be visiting our past exchange students Miki and Hiro, so we're all really excited to see these old friends! It should be a great way to enjoy Japan as much as possible before returning home in January.

Jaa Mata!