skipping a few weeks.... Day 33?

Its so easy to lose track of time here in Pisco. So much has happened in the past few weeks. About half of the volunteers have left, so our numbers are down, but there have been new people arriving everyday, many of them staying for a long time. So today is friday, and on tuesday, I stepped on a plank with a 4 inch nail sticking out of it, and the nail went through my boot and about a half inch into the ball of my foot. It didn't actually hurt that bad and after about a half hour it stopped bleeding and I went back to work. Then the next day I woke up with a really high fever, so I went to the clinic to see if they had the tetanus anti imuno injection, but they didnt so they told me to go to the hospital. So David took me to the nicer private hospital and they were being so rude and unhelpful, some local lady told us to go to the government hospital. So we went there, but they told us that you can only get the tetanus injection in the morning. So they gave me an injection to make my fever go away, in a TENT. a tent. then we had to go back yesterday (thursday) morning to get my tetanus shot. Then I found out I have to get another one in april then another in august. :( Then last night my fever came back, BLEH, but today I feel better, so my antibiotics are probably starting to kick in. YAY!

Day 18: Tuesday, February 7th

Today I worked on the Earthbag project. This project is eventually going to be a community center in a small rural area outside of Pisco. We are also going to build a garden and a bridge that goes across the little creek. The reason it's called "earthbags" is because we get these bags and fill them with a mixture of dirt and sand and flyash, and that is what we build the center out of because its very flexible in case there's an earthquake.

We basically dug for 8 hours... lol. But it was actually quite fun and we got a good workout.

Day 17: Monday, February 6

Today I did DEMOLITION!!!! So there was a family whose store/house was essentially just rubble and brick walls and the government gave them about 2 weeks to clear the land or they would lose it, so we finished breaking down walls, pulling up the tile and clearing the rubble. There were some brick walls, concrete pillars, and the floor was tile, so we had to get rid of everything and level it down to the dirt. Today was almost the last day, so all we had to do was finish taking down three pillars and the brick wall. I got to use the pick ax which was really fun because I just got to hit a wall as hard as you can. It's very emotionally therapeutic. Then I got to use the jack hammer, which was so much fun but very heavy.

Around 1:00 these sweet old ladies brought us homemade lunch which was of course delicious. Then Kathryn, one of the Australians, and I went to Senati to teach. :)

Then we had dinner and bed time. woo!

FYI: PICTURES

So I've taken over part of the Education position for PSF, so I have been super busy this week so that's why im so far behind on the blog. But im sick today and hopefully i can get this week blogged. :) If you want to see pictures now, because it will take me awhile to post them here) you can go to my fb page, add me as a friend if we arent already then go to my peru album. :)  my facebook page:   http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589252676

the album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150548393717677.373340.589252676&type=1

Day 16: Sunday

The next morning we all woke up from the sun beating down on us because we all fell asleep next to the fire. I got out of my sleeping bag, then fell back asleep. Finally around 9:00, it got too hot, so I went in the water. Then I got out of the water, sunscreened up and laid out in the sun and slept. That's basically all I did the entire day, ocean, sunscreen, sleep.

We left Paracas at around 4 and went back to PSF and cleaned up then went over to the gas station/restaurant/bar/store and watched the Superbowl! Go Giants... I guess...

Day 15: Saturday February 6th

Today we had a half day. YAY! So I taught the Intercambio English classes today which is the free walk in classes that we have at the PSF HQ. I ended up teaching three 9 year old girls. They barely knew any english but they were so excited to learn. We learned some verbs then played charades. Then I drew a super ugly person on the white board and we learned the parts of the body. It was really fun. We ended around 12:30, then I ate, showered, then had a meeting at Senati (which I am now the team leader of, YAY!) and then I came back and packed up all my camping gear to go camping in the Paracas national park! WOOO!!!!

We took a super ghetto, falling-apart bus for about 30 minutes through a desert til we finally got to this massive cliff overlooking the beach. We had to walk down a super steep incline for about half a mile with all of our camping gear including food and wood and tent supplies, but we finally did it and got everything set up. We made a fire and cooked some stew. We had wonderful conversations, telling stories and jokes.

And now for some really bad pictures...

Day 14: Friday February 8

Friday I taught classes at the San Martin colegio (high school). Then later that afternoon, I went and taught at the Senati (a technical school) classes, which is supposed to be just assisting the teacher, but instead, the teacher just handed me the book and told me, 'this is what chapter they're on" and had me teach the two hour class.  I honestly don't remember much about the rest of the day or the details because Friday night was Auction Night.

AUCTION NIGHT: most epic night ever.

So basically Auction Night is a fundraiser in which volunteers can auction off some of their personal items or services, most people auction off services. For example, I auctioned off an hour long massage and being someone's slave for a week. Other people auctioned stuff off like, a private dinner for two, beer runner, a concert, spanish lessons, german lessons, their virginity (he's a 30 year old man who is definitely NOT a virgin), and other various services that may be too inappropriate to mention... haha. Anyways, the auctioneers basically get everyone drunk so people just bid like crazy. And it worked. The auction went on for almost three hours and we raised over 4,000 soles, which is about $1,500!!!

After the auction, I found out that one of the Australian dudes bought me as his bitch for a week... I start on monday.

After the auction everyone went out to MYSTICA! It was fun and awesome. Then we came back and went to bed. :)

Day 13: Thursday February 2nd

Today we had a plan to cook dinner. I had just found out that there was going to be a cooking competition for the best meal of the week, so I got super into it and our team was determined to win! We decided to have a grand american classic. Burgers. So we went off to the market.

We got ground beef for the burgers and black beans for the hippie burgers. We also got basil and tomato and cheese to make a caprese salad. Then we decided to do a chocolate cake for dessert. We also got about 50 potatoes to make potato wedges.

After prepping everything, around 5 I began grilling the burgers on the outside grill. It was so hot and smoky that my eyes were watering the whole time. I was surprised I even had any tears left because I had been chopping and carmelizing onions the entire day and crying because of that.

Once the burgers were done, we served everyone and with our grilled pineapple and carmelized onion toppings we were sure that we had won the competition. But the earlier nights were incredible delicious as well so we'll see...

Day 12: Wednesday, February 1st

Today I taught my first large English class to teenagers! There was about 60 of them! But between Jo, Madi, Claudia, and I, we were able to split the class up into groups of 15. So I went to the whiteboard and began attempting to teach my lesson plan that I had wrote last week.  First, we began talking about contractions and I gave some examples of spanish contractions. Then we went into talking about English contractions such as "what's" and "it's" and "they're", etc. Then I would ask them to give me more examples or ask them what the contraction of "it" and "is" was, but they were all so shy and distracted because they are all around 14 years old and technically they are on their summer vacation, so they weren't too keen on participating. 

Eventually, I just ended up making them each give me an example of a contraction and they understood the concept, so I told them after one more activity we would play a game. So I split them into groups of four and I wrote 5 questions on the board in English, "What is your favorite band?" "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" "Do you have any pets?" etc. Then they had to ask each member of their group each question in english and write their response in english as well. Once they got started, I went around the class and asked them if they had any questions and I asked them to translate each question into Spanish to make sure that they understood the question. They actually asked me some questions about what certain words meant and how to pronounce words. Once they were done I had each group write two of the questions and two of their answers up on the whiteboard. Then they had to present their two questions and answers to the rest of the class. They were so shy and embarrassed; they kept laughing and I kept telling them, "No necessitan tener miedo! Son tus amigos!" (you don't need to be afraid, they are your friends!) They loosened up a bit, especially with my terrible spanish accent and grammar. Once each group presented I told them that we would play a game because they all did really well. 

For the game I had each of them write a spanish word on a piece of paper. Then they had to crunch the paper up into a ball. Then we had a 'snowball fight', throwing the papers around the room. Then I told each of them to pick up a piece of paper and open it up. They had to say the spanish word, then say what the English translation was. After that, we still had some extra time so I suggested Charades because, I mean, who the heck doesn't like Charades? Apperently, they don't because I acted a few words out first and no one wanted to guess because they didn't want to act in front of the class. So I changed the rules a bit. I told them that whoever guessed the word got to pick someone else to go act out a word. All of the sudden they were shouting out the answers to they could embarrass their friends. We finished our lesson and I was mentally exhausted but in a good way. I have so much more respect for my spanish teachers growing up now, lol. I had an amazing sense of accomplishment and I couldn't wait to go back and fill their little minds with knowledge!

After going back to PSF HQ for lunch, I went to Ludoteca. After playing a few games of UNO, the kids worked on long multiplication. I sat there and helped them and corrected their papers when they were finished. It was awesome, because math is the same in every language. After playing games for a little bit longer, Robbie began the English lessons with the older kids. We went over how to order food in a restaurant. Robbie is Irish, so of course all of his pronunciations of everything was wrong. LOL

After Ludoteca, we went back to PSF and had a delicious German meal cooked by the four German girls. Afterwards, I had a nice sleep. :)