Castillos and Mr. Burns

I missed my first party in Peru last night. Parties here seem like they start anytime someone is moved and then end three days later with the sunrise. When I heard we were having a party for a saint called Sr. Cautivo de Ayabaca and then my friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Alyssa was in the big city taking care of some errands I invited her to visit Rinconada and celebrate. People in town love meeting gringos and I love for my American friends to know about my daily life so, with common interests life is easy. Alyssa and I made a delicious spaghetti dinner, played with my new kitten Spot (whose name may change soon), and heard the party start thinking that it would dawdle on for 3 more days. When we went out to wonder at the revelry the square was totally empty and they had already set off all of the fireworks. Fiestas here are designated as such by castillos, several story-tall bamboo geometric structures with fireworks tied to the corners. Castillos are among my favorite things in Peru. They involve moving parts and bamboo bell shapes that spin off into the crowd shooting fire. Sometimes they are formed into costumes that a guy gets inside of and then dances a dance called the Vaca Loca (Crazy Cow). Alyssa and I polished off our bottle of red wine and headed out to the town square to find empty silence. Everyone in town was huddled around a television set at the store. Peru was playing Paraguay and the score was 1 to 1. Not being very well informed about soccer I had no idea this was happening, or even what tournament it was.

In other news, I have been spending my Internet hours in a debate with my authoritarian and patronizing country director. When I started Peace Corps we were given five vacation days around Thanksgiving and he decided to cut this down to three. He pulled a fast one, put his decision in the minutes of this meeting and then sent around a new copy of our handbook, a 100 page document that of course no one read. After a few weeks he said, "Nany-nany-boo-boo you should have spent your time lawyering the documents that I sent around. Te-he I took two vacation days from you." He didn't break any rules or laws to do this so there's really no hook for recourse but still, no one even made him feel appropriate shame for being lame because they're scared of this guy who looks like Mr. Burns. I felt that I needed to take that on as authoritarianism is one of my angry buttons. The outcome of our hopefully professional conversation is that I am officially not his favorite person and he actively threatened me. Now I need to send him an email that ends with him being okay with writing me a solid letter of recommendation within a year. Hopefully it will be a magical email. Wish me luck. I am charming after all.

Then, I went to this amazing workshop about child development and education methodology this week. The town government paid for it and had the schools cancel two days of class to invite all the teachers. I'm not sure it was worth the kids missing school but, it was really interesting for me to get to brainstorm about learning toys and games that focus on the different sensory groups and different developmental stages.

I also was invited to give a lesson at a newly formed after-school center to elementary-age kids signing a song about trees to the tune of I'm a Little Tea-pot. I wish that I could claim the creative mind for this song, but my friend and fellow volunteer with a gift for early childhood education, Tessa wrote it.

It goes something like this:

Yo soy un árbol muy feliz
Desde mis hojas hasta mi raíz
Llega el sol y la lluvia y
Crezco, crezco, crezco, crezco así


She might kill me because I'm not exactly sure those are the words that she wrote, but something like that.