El Dia de San Juan

This week has been pretty much all fiesta. They don't do holidays halfway here. On Monday I learned how to make juanes, these rice chicken balls that I cannot make for you at home because I'm pretty much positive I won't be able to find the leaves you wrap them in. They eat them here all the time though, especially to take hiking and such. On Tuesday I went on a field trip with the Jardin kids, and on Wednesday we just ate and played. So no classes this week. Thursday was the big holiday. We spent the night at a friend's house in Moyo so that we could get up at four and join the rest of Moyobamba for the pandilla. To get an idea of a pandilla imagine a line of EFY kids (you know, escorts), then have them do a sort of prancy jog dance thing, then have them do it for seven kilometers through the streets with the rest of their city. And that should give you an idea of what we did for the pandilla. Of course we also stopped periodically to have dance circles in the street. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, but super tiring, so we slept through most of the afternoon. That night they did more pandilla, as well as the jungle form of the pinata. They have palm logs stuck in the street throughout the city, and attached to the top is a big loop with things like toilet paper and soda and baby clothes tied to it. They dance through the city and chop each one down, and people run up to grab the stuff off it. It was pretty fun.
Friday night we decided to go camping. We came to Moyo and got some supplies to make tinfoil dinners, borrowed a couple tarps and a couple machetes, and struck out for Wuilman's chacra. It was me, Jenny, Caleb, and Linea (one of the other volunteers here). With our usual perfect planning, we struck out at sundown for a place we had been to once our first week here. It made finding it a little interesting, but if I ever wanted to feel like a jungle adventurer, climbing through barbed wire fences by the light of a full moon with a machete in my hand got me pretty close :) We camped out in a cornfield and had our fire, tinfoils, and as close as we could get to smores and banana boats without being able to get ahold of marshmallows. It was fun :) The strangest part was waking up in the morning to our fellow villagers, who were at work.
Saturday was quiet, and then Sunday we did some moving. There's another house full of volunteers here in Yantalo, but they had more girls coming, so they wanted to move the two guys to our house and move me and Jenny there. However, we managed to arrange things so that we could stay in our little house with our little family, instead of with 15 other girls in one house. So Jenny and I moved into Caleb's room and he and the two guys, Viral and Tilon, moved into ours, and we are now happily situated. They're cool guys, it's been fun to have them around.
Anyway, there's my life for the last week. Yesterday and today were holidays too, but classes should start back up tomorrow. Things are going well here and I'm still really enjoying it, though I confess myself ready to eat something besides rice and beans. So happy Dias de San Juan, San Pedro, and San Pablo!
P.S. We bought a pet bunny. He is sitting on my lap right now, and we named him Casino (which happens to be our favorite brand of cookie here). He's a little bigger than my two fists and super cute. We're giving him as a present to our hosts, under the condition that they can't eat him until after we leave.
PPS I forgot, the other weekend we performed in a dance festival with the colegio here. Our numbers? Jenny and I acted out Love Story while we sang it, and our whole group of volunteers (about 15) rapped the Fresh Prince of Belair. It was a lot of fun, even if they didn't quite get it. I'll try to put up more pictures next week. I love you all!