I've taken up running!?!

I have been feeling pretty sedentary lately and not liking it a bit. It's probably my personal continuous battle against diarrhea coupled with that Peace Corps fun of trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing all the time. In any case, I've taken up running and it seems to be helping on both fronts. What!?! You say in that incredulous tone I love so much. I know. I was also surprised at this development, but it's shaping up well. Fun times in Rinconada Llicuar. Reasons: 1. The loud speaker system in town wakes me up every morning at 5AM with the day´s news and events: Fresh fish for sale at Marta's house, PTA meeting at 3 at the elementary school, and telephone call for Sr. Alberto Rumiche at the public phone. It's pretty exciting and there's music. This seems like it would be quaint except it's 5 yes 5 in the morning and lasts for about an hour and a half. So at 5:30 AM a couple of weeks ago I was laying in bed thinking, ¨I should be doing something useful. I would love to be sleeping, but that is simply not possible. What shall I do?¨ 2. The day before I had 3 different meetings that no one showed up to and I was feeling generally ineffective. 3. I was also having this lack of exercise problem what with the great distance between me and the Brooklyn YMCA so I decided that as the sun was only just coming up and it was a balmy 75 degrees or so I would get some exercise. Running it is.

Since then I've done a little research on how to run, how much to run, etc... In doing so, I found The President's Challenge. Now the President is actually not my favorite guy in the whole world, but this challenge is pretty cool. It's a little exercise log and for me it's really helpful for motivation on those days when the loud speakers are going, but I just want to lay there and do nothing anyway.

http://presidentschallenge.org/

Lady Liberty in Rinconada and a few other shots

What you say? The Statue of Liberty is in New York Harbor? We have one too! I'm not sure what the story on it is, and no one else seems to know either, but I'm going to keep asking. In the square in fromt of the church in Rinconada there is a plaster 1.5 meter tall version of the Statue of Liberty on a pedestal.

My Room

Wee neighbors who come to visit every afternoon.

Sunset in Rinconada

It's Picture Day

Someday I'll get it together to get my photos to the internet cafe in a timely manner so that I don't make these long posts of only photos... Maybe? :)

Aurora and Elmer- I work with them at the health post in town where Aurora is the midwife and Elmer is a nurse.




Me having lunch with the family. The mom is Dora and the little girl is Ingrid 6 yrs, next to her brother Pepe 7 yrs, and their oldest brother Darwin 12 yrs.





Makin music in San Clemente with Dora's brother and cousin. They're doing a practice for aChristmas dance/music performance.

Salt... the fountain of life?

This is just an interesting article from the NY Times. Click on the title ¨Salt.. the fountain of life?¨ for the link. The difference between lives with and without mental disability... It's so amazing how basic nutrients have such profound effects.

airing my dirty laundry

In keeping with my current practice of airing my dirty undies on the blog, a funny thing happened to me last week. I was doing my laundry. This is an energetic process where I stand in the back yard with a couple of buckets of water and a blue plastic wash tub and make an attempt at scrubbing that no self-respecting Peruvian alma de casa would take for cleaning. There is a waste water system in town and it's new, so people are still getting used to using it. The only connection to the waste water system in our house is the toilet, so all waste water that doesn't get dumped in the yard goes down the toilet. I had successfully washed all of my clothes and was starting the rinse process, so I went to dump out the soapy dirty water down the toilet. As the water flowed out of the bucket so did a fairly new pair of white cotton panties which had been camouflaged by the grayish water. I dropped the bucket and with my other hand tried to grab the errant undies from the toilet but they slipped off the tips of my fingers and down into the nether regions of the new waste water system. Deep breath. Now I'm in Peru in the desert using very little water to try to get clean and I have my arm in the toilet about up to the elbow. I'm thinking, ¨Oh no! What if my undies stop-up the toilet? This is the only toilet for 7 household members! EEEK!¨ So I fish around in the nether regions some more since my hand is conveniently down the toilet anyway, but it was tough times because I started to retch when my thoughts started to drift to all the times that the water didn't agree with me and I was sitting on that toilet wondering how I was the only one in the house with explosive diarrhea. So I pulled my hand out of the toilet. Washed, washed some more, clipped my nails and washed again, got up some courage and did the only thing that I could think of- tell a household member that I may have stopped up their toilet but flushing my panties down a toilet where flushing means dumping a bucket of water- or 3- down the toilet until the color is clear and there are no floaters.

Even though the water did seem to be flushing when I dumped another bucket or two down the chute to test it out I could just see the toilet stopping up in a week and poor Martin sitting there trying to figure out what the hell was wrong, so to avoid this I decided I had to discuss this with someone. As I tried in my very best in very professional and respectful Spanish to explain this to the only family member at home- the dad, Martin- he turned bright red and started to giggle hysterically. I did likewise. We decided not to worry about them until the toilet actually stopped up. It has been a week and all seems fairly clear- so fingers crossed that there will be no taking off the toilet and fishing around in the pipes. Did I mention that they were new?!

Guess what I want for Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

101: bathing and shaving your legs in a paint bucket

Of the many skills that I have acquired as a Peace Corps Volunteer perhaps the most useful so far is expertise in bathing and shaving my legs in a gallon bucket that once contained green paint the color of my wall. There's this joke in the Peace Corps about how volunteers don't see a glass half empty, they see a glass half full and then they take a bath in it. I always thought it was kind of a dumb joke, but it's getting funnier.

In Rinconada Llicuar, the town where I live they turn on the water in the public water system for a couple of hours every other morning. Everyone fills up every thing in the house that will stand still. There are always at least a couple of big plastic garbage cans, 5 gallon buckets, enormous cooking pots, and in the case of my house, 1 gallon paint cans. Some older families also have ceramic pots big enough for me to crawl into. Somehow with all of the washing and cooking and bathing and cleaning that goes on the water starts to run really short by the evening of the second day. I enjoy trying to be clean, but I'm still wary of using too much water since I'm living in a house with a family of 3 kids, a mom, a dad, an uncle, and little ole me. I was standing over the paint can that the kids use to bathe and I was noticing that there wasn't really going to be enough water to fill up the larger bucket that the adults usually use. Alrighty then, I put some hot water from the kettle in the kid can and filled up the rest with cool water. In the bathroom with my tin cup, my cotton washcloth, my razor, and the gallon paint can I was giggling like crazy. The family probably thinks I'm bananas, but I didn't think that they would get it... and I thought that it was damn hilarious. When I was done: nice bald legs, un-smelly self, and not a drop of soap left on me. It's all about the tin cup and cotton washcloth.

My new travel recommendation and addendum to what we learned from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: never leave home without your tin cup and cotton towel.