Goodbye Frisbee

Peru swallows frisbees like nobody´s business! The kids in our town were stoked to play with such a cool new toy... for about 5 minutes before it ended up on the roof of the tienda (store) next to our house. Now it´s back to soccer matches that are more akin to a circus of gringoes with balls rolling between their legs. At least it´s good exercise! You can just barely make out the frisbee in the picture above.
We live in a little barrio outside of Chosica (picture above). Basically, Chosica is along a busy road that follows the River Rimac up out of Lima into the mountains. It´s a complete and unabashed desert here. The foothills do not have a single plant on them, completely rock. I think the only rain on this side of the Andes comes in the form of occasional floods. Our barrio, like most of them, was formed by squatters about 40 years ago by the employees of a nearby country club. Lots of folk from Lima come up here because there´s more sun here during the winter (Lima is locked in with constant cloud cover). Our barrio has about 1,000 families. The main road is dirt, there´s a school, health post, church, and a bunch of tiendas. Every day we have about a 15 minute butt buster walk up a hill to our house. Of course, lots of dogs to guide the way.
The Peace Corps training center is a 10 minute bus ride from our home in a different neighborhood. The busses are called combis and they play really loud music. It actually reminds me a lot of India with the music blasing out of a vehicle filled to 400% capacity. Basically every day we have 4 hours of language class a day and 4 hours of technical training. It´s going well, there´s a lot to learn. The whole language thing can be pretty exhausting, as there´s really no true rest until your head hits the pillow. It´s a lot like being a child again. I feel so dependent on others for so many of my basic needs: food, where to go, how to get there, when to do things, ect. Not to mention that we basically have the vocabulary of a 5 year old with which to communicate. It´s hard to give up so much independence!
That said, our language is defiantely progressing. Our host family is so kind and takes the time to explian everything about five different ways so we know what they´re talking about. They are truly about the LOVE - so kind and truly good people. We spend so much time talking and laughing together every night. They love to joke around and will even kill the moment by explaining exactly WHY something is funny.
In the beginning our family worried a lot about what to cook since Ang is a veg, but Peruvian food is actually really basic. Quinoa, rice, rice, rice, rice, vegetables, fruit (it´s been fun trying all the different types of new fruit), potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, and rice. Breakfast is super small, some bread and juice. Usually we eat the same thing for lunch and dinner. Our host family (the wife) makes tamales to sell to the barrio every Sunday. They are KILLER!! We put up a picture of Ang tying some of them togther. They´re basically corn meal, chicken boullion, hot pepper, and spices with a piece of chicken, onion, and an olive wrapped up into a banana leaf and steamed for two hours. We eat them every Sunday for breakfast. We also put up a picture of the 1 year old with mango all over his cute little face.
Last weekend, the local school had a dance for the community. Each class dressed in traditional clothing and did a dance from different regions of the country. Two of the kids in our family, 8 and 13, danced. It was pretty awesome (pics above).
Oh yeah, we found out that we´ll be placed somewhere in the north of Peru, but we don´t know exactly where yet. We should know within three weeks.
Sorry about taking the snail mail address off. I was informed that it´s agains the rules to post specific addresses on a blog. I´ll email out to you Krista and AM. If anyone else wants to know it, let me know and I´ll email it. We also learned that it costs 3 DOLLARS to send a LETTER, so I´m not so sure that it is a viable means of communication for us.