Fishing and Mountains

This was a fun week with a lot of activities besides work. We don’t have to stick to a P day here when it comes to doing fun recreational things :)
Tuesday: Peruvian Pizza Adventure! (And my first earthquake) Caleb decided he was bound and determined to make a pizza, so he scrounged up some mozzarella (since a fair number of people here have never even heard of it) and flour and a few other ingredients and we went to the restaurant to have a pizza party with them. It was admittedly not really like American pizza. For one thing they don’t really have ovens here. The only oven they had is used for roasting like five chickens at once over a wood burning fire. So we set up a sort of barbeque over that fire and grilled our pizza by cooking one side of the crust, then flipping it over and putting the toppings on the cooked side and cooking the other side. There were only a few mishaps with the crust breaking, but it mostly worked pretty well. We also made up the dough recipe. We had a sort of sauce with chopped fresh tomatoes, garlic, salt, oregano, and basil, and for topping we had red onions, spinach, chicken, and steak. And in spite of its un-Americaness, it was really good. It’s funny what foods you find yourself missing. Jenny and I discovered that the Church building has an oven, and we are now determined to make chocolate chip cookies : ) Tuesday night we were just sitting and chilling when I felt my bed start shaking. I figured it was just Lura on the top bunk shaking her leg until someone said “earthquake” and I realized everyone (we had two other volunteers staying with us at the time as well) was looking at each other in alarm. There was some frenzied questioning about what we should do, and then we all hurried out to the backyard. We could see all the trees swaying and the bathroom mirror swinging. It only lasted a few seconds and nothing was damaged, but nobody was ready for bed after that. (The green "S"s are safe zones for earthquakes and are all over here. We took this picture a couple days before the quake.)
Wednesday: We expeditioned to another village with the school for the school kids to compete in soccer and volleyball. It was one of the moments where we just have to laugh at the differences. Transportation for the kids consisted of a large open backed truck that they just all stood up in (we were in a van with the professors, but there were still too many of us by US standards). We took those as far as the river, where they had to be abandoned upon taking the ferry. On the other side there was another truck for the kids and a fleet of motos and motorcycles for everyone else. The games were fun (though super hot) and it was interesting to see another village. It made us all really appreciate Yantalo, because as far as poor rural villages go it’s a pretty nice and clean one, mostly because they have a trash system instituted.
Thursday: Fishing! Caleb managed to make friends with a fisherman who agreed to take us on a trip. It was way cool because it involved about half an hour of walking through jungle river bank, which was beautiful. I wish pictures could even capture it. Fishing seems to be simpler here. You have a piece of wood with fishing line wrapped around it and a hook and a weight on the end and bait them with earthworms. I was the only one who managed to catch anything (meaning I caught one about 3 inches long that we cut up for bait, with which I managed to catch a crab that got away), but Jenny did manage to throw her line in the river when casting once, so our guide’s son had to dive in and save it. I’ll admit, I was jealous of the diving in part :) It rained while we were there, but it was so beautiful on the river. I loved it. Our guide gave us a big fish he caught so we could take it home and learn how to cook it and eat it, again at our little restaurant.
Friday: Sleep. It was kind of a crash day all around.
Saturday: Hiking! We hiked Mount Moro, which is sort of the Mt. Timp of this area. It was definitely the hardest hike I have ever done, which was probably a combination of the climate, the fact that I’ve only really been hiking once yet this year, and the fact that the philosophy of the trail seemed to be “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” because we were pretty much going straight up the mountain. (We found out later that there are three ways up the mountain, and that the way we took was the longest and hardest). It was so beautiful though. For part of the climb we were in serious jungle, and it was amazing. I wish pictures could capture it, but there’s something about the three-dimensionality of it and the space of branches, trees, and vines that flat cameras just can’t capture. It’s the kind of thing you have to see. After we came out of the jungle we got sweeping views of pretty much all of the San Martin valley area I think. It’s so green here, between the fields and forest, with little scattered villages. Climbing down was of course a lot quicker (on the way up we ended up having to rest kind of ridiculously often—I don’t think my body is used to losing water that quickly), but down was still kind of slow going as we had to be careful not to fall off the mountain because it was so steep. We got to do some bouldering/rock scrambling too, which was fun. It’s the first time that my arms have been really sore from hiking and not my legs—all the rock climbing stuff. On our way back through the jungle section we took a stop to swing on vines (see picture at top) :) It was a fun, crazy American thing to do, that the Peruvians really enjoyed as well : )
In general, life goes on here in Yantalo. This week my major goal is to really focus on and work hard on the language. Mostly understanding is ok, but can be really frustrating and embarrassing in conversation, especially when they can tell you’re just nodding and smile a little and say “no entiendes,” or “you don’t understand.” But it’s all good. Favorite quote for the week (besides being called Barbie at church—it’s the hair): “Mama, mira, gringas!” or “Look Mom, white girls!” Have a good week!