i love a good garbage fire in the morning

Okay, this may be a long one. A lot has happened this week-both things I enjoyed, and things that I definitely didn´t. For instance, I really liked going to the agraria again this weekend and learning how to construct a really simple greenhouse, but I didn´t like watching a chicken get its head chopped off at the market today. Once I feel like I have gotten pretty accustomed here, something happens and I´m thrown off my high horse. Today I went to the city of Choscia with my friends Jess and Alex. I got the biggest palmier I have ever seen (and more delicious than the ones at Vie de France). It was bigger than my head. And I managed to eat the whole thing. I also bought an illegal DVD that shows Ice ages 1-3 and Madagascars 1 and 2. I watched part of Ice Age 3 but it is seriously so jank that I stopped halfway in. For a second, I half expected Ray Romano´s voice to be pumping out some spanish but that was sooooo not the case. It seemed like the people who did the voices of the characters were all in someone´s kitchen together with a baby (because there´s a baby crying in the background). I only paid 2 soles for it (which amounts to less than a dollar), so I guess I got what I paid for.

In Chosica there are two megamarkets- one food related and the other toys, shoes, clothes, and other non essential stuff related. I am in love with the latter. I was in a third world outdoor mall. I relished in it. During my period of prowling, I was approached by four cute little girls that had been looking at pointing at my friends and I for about a minute before they got the guts to come up to us. I´m putting them at ages 4-6. After asking me my name, they then of course, wanted to know if I had any children. Now I realize I have been lax about putting on the anti-wrinkle cream, but come on!!! I replied no, I only had sisters, so naturally asked me if I was married. I realize the people in Peru are an inquisitive folk, but this was within the first 15 seconds of our friendship. Explaining I was single, the girls giggled and ran away. So much for forming long lasting friendships.

I then proceeded to the food market which was cool, has some not so great sights. My favorite part is the fruit area but to get there you have to pass through the meat section. Oh my mother of God. There was a lovely goat head on a table to greet me and the whole place smelled like rotting blood. That´s not even the worst part. While walking towards the exit, I unfortunately looked to my left just in time to see a LIVE chicken get its head hacked off in front of his friends. Gagging and about to vomit, I ran the rest of the way out. I proceeded to have a chicken leg for lunch while my grandfather munched on a chicken foot in his soup. Needless to say, there was no appetite and I hope I´m not getting leftovers for dinner.

Earlier this week the ambassador from the US to Peru came to our training center and had lunch with us. He was a pretty cool guy (name Michael McKinley). Afterwards, we had a Q and A session about everything dealing with Peru and his life as an ambassador, but sadly it was pretty politically correct, so we didn´t get to find out the craziest thing he had done here while being protected by diplomatic immunity. Cést la vie.

If any of you are perusing my facebook pictures and see the ones of a guy in a Barney costume, that´s one of my friends. Birthdays are a big thing here and it was one of the volunteer´s birthdays on Thursday. So, the Barney costume was on loan from the library for my friend to dress up in as a surprise for the birthday boy. I cannot convey to you how disgusting it was. I´m thinking it was about twenty years old. On Friday morning, my friend came in with some suspicious looking bug bites and I don´t even want to consider what was in that costume that could have caused those.

I´m sure you´re all wondering how Tres de Octubre went. It was great! To the dissappointment of you all, there was no rendition of Grease ( I know, I am a failure at life). Truth be told, a two of the girls (out of four) here have been sick with either a parasite or strep throat so our practicing conditions weren´t ideal. Some boys from Cuerpo de Paz (Peace Corps) did a cover of Creedence Cleerwater´s Bad Moon and Proud Mary on the guitar and ukelele. While NO ONE in our coomunity had heard of either of those songs, they still got pretty into it. And more importantly, I loved it. The celebration was more for the little kids of the neighborhood who had all dressed up in costumes and crazy Michael Jackson outfits. It was kind of like an elementary school- styled talent show. And what better way is there to illustrate one´s talent than a Michael Jackson dance? There isn´t one. So there were SIX MJ dances slash tributes. Kids wore the white gloves and all. Don´t worry I took videos and will try to post them on youtube this week.

After things started to slow down at Tres, a bunch of other volunteers and I headed over to a town called Yanacoto arround midnight which is about three miles down the carreterra central from tres de octubre. They were having a virgin festival similar to the one we had here about two weeks ago. This time I got to see the wooden structures get lit on fire and shoot off fireworks!!! It. was. awesome. However when the first one went off, I happened to be using an outdoor ladies room (that I invented myself behind a building a little ways off). I seriously thought I was being attacked by an air raid. There were flashed of light, insanely loud crashes that closely resembled gunshots and the ground was shaking. I screamed, stopped what I was doing immediately and ran back to the group.

In other news, I went to a huge American-styled mall yesterday in Lima and ate Burger King chicken nuggests for the first time in like five years. They don´t sell honey so I made
do with some sweet and sour sauce from the Chinese place. It was delicious. I´ve also discovered that garbage fires on the sides of streets are one of the ways that people here manage their trash situation. It smells horrible and I wish there was a better trash collecting system here but that´s just how a lot of people have been conditioned to take care of their trash I guess. Also in urgent news, abc.com DOES NOT WORK OUTSIDE OF THE US! I am thus deprived of all lost and flash forward watching abilities. BIRTHDAY IDEA: I reallllllly like tv shows, especially when I can watch them without commercials and in a DVD format :).

Tomorrow I am going to the local Chaclacayo library to volunteer with a few other volunteers and play with some kids after they are done with school. I´m really excited! Hopefully they like frisbee, because that´s what I´m bringing.

Okay dinner´s being served soon so I am going to sign off here. I hope everyone is doing well and I like being updated on current events! Peace out.