Fame, Fortune and Funnel Cakes (though not in that order:) )

The past few weeks have been fairly exciting. First I spent four days in Lima at a Project Design and Management seminar which is put on by the Peace Corps to aid in the development of community projects. Each volunteer takes his or her counterpart, however since I don’t have an official counterpart, invited my host father, Melo (Ismael). The seminar was quite interesting and constructive and the material will definitely come in handy as I prepare to start a number of projects here in Tunal.

Melo and I spent the day before the seminar traveling around Lima. We first went to the backpackers hostel where I normally stay in Miraflores (a very touristy district) but Melo was a bit uncomfortable when he saw that we were going to share the room with 6 strangers…so we ended up calling his sister who lives in Lima and went to her house… after taking a 14 sol taxi ride in the wrong direction.. and nearly 3 hours of searching. Turns out that she lived about 2 hours from the center of town (lima’s a pretty big city). We stayed there until late afternoon until I convinced Melo that it’d be better to stay in the hostel since we had to be in that neck of the woods early the next morning. We made the journey back into the city and spent the rest of the day being tourists. After dinner I took Melo to see one of the casinos-which interestingly are very common throughout the cities here in Peru. (remember that he’s from a very rural area… quite different from the most ritzy part of Lima) We each bought in for 5 soles…about $1.50 just to try out the slot machines. After assuring him that we’d both walk away with empty pockets we took to the games… the first nickel that he inserted won him 30 tokens… doesn’t that figure! He ended up winning 4 dollars in the half hour we were there…and they gave him one dollar bills. I came away empty handed.

In the world of football here in Tunal, it’s been a very successful month. Our team is now 4-0 and it looks as though we’ll be moving on to the neighboring districts in June to follow our quest for the Peru Cup. I was a bit disappointed after our third game since I didn’t see any playing time (though I do realize that I’m no doubt a weak link on the team) so when I dressed for the fourth, I was pretty sure that I was going to spend the whole time on the bench again. The game was against Ullima, probably the next strongest team in the league. It was locked at 0-0 for nearly the whole game. With about 15 minutes I was pretty much tuned out of the game… counting down the time until I would go home to eat dinner when I hear my name… apparently they were out of ideas to find a competitive edge, so they decided to put the gringo in.... I entered the game with a big roar from the crowd(I felt kind of like the little kid that everyone knows can’t play, but cheers for him just to lift his spirits)… I was playing striker… the guy that scores goals.. something that I’ve done only once in my 8 months here. Well, the one and only advantage that I have over the other players is that I’m faster. A minute or so into play our goalie punted the ball toward the other goal… he’s a pretty strong guy so it crossed midfield in the air… and I started running… it was me and the goalie.. and I was running just about as fast as I could..plus a little.. well… I didn’t score. I was about 0.2 seconds late as the goalie beat me to the ball. (you were probably thinking that I was going to score) So that happened again within about 3 minutes. The next time I was accompanied by a teammate. Instead of taking the ball myself I headed it to him and he finished it off scoring the first goal of the game. It was pretty exciting!! About 5 minutes later we made an almost identical play, scoring again. In the end we won 2 to 1. If you’ve ever seen me play soccer, you’d know that I’m pretty bad… really bad… but for some reason that day, I just had some kind of lucky streak. I’ve since become quite famous throughout the district… all the people are commenting how Tunal’s team has a contract with the gringo from the United States. Even half way to Piura a guy asked if I was the American who played for Tunal… all I can do is laugh and tell them not to expect that from me again. Unfortunately I will not be about to play in the next two games… although maybe it’s better that they don’t see how I normally play.

Ok… so moving on… Two days ago I had my first official meeting with a group of women interested in the elaboration of an income generating project. About 10 women attended the meeting which was meant to see if there was interest as well as to plan a series of project design sessions for June. It’s looking really good…the whole time they were mentioning things that they could make and sell…a little ahead of the game, but at least they are starting to get excited. I have a number of ideas in mind, but I’m going to let the ladies decide what they’d like to do. Most likely it will deal with weavings.

Yesterday I arrived home after playing soccer for a couple hours to find that there was no water. Apparently for the next 6 months we will only have water for 2 hours each day, from 6am-8am. Because it was a fairly dry rainy season, they’re a bit worried that there won’t be enough water for the rest of the year. Looks like I’ll be taking bucket showers for a while!

I’ve been trying to introduce my family here to a number of treats from the States. They love the Reeses Pieces and Peanut butter Cups that mom and dad brought. I’ve also baked a number of cakes and brownies from the boxes of mix that mom and dad also brought. I’ve found that they don’t like the ‘real food’ that I prepare with vegetables and such, since they really only like rice, potatoes, corn and yucca… so I’ve been sticking to preparing the unhealthy, sweet things. Last night I made funnel cakes, which went over really well.

The most exciting news for the next couple weeks is that I’m heading back to the states for a quick vacation! I’ll be arriving on the 22^nd and heading back to Peru on the 30th. If there’s anything you’d like to send to my community for the kids feel free to drop it off at my house. I’d love to take a few soccer balls of toys back for them! I’m somewhat limited as to what I can take.. only two suitcases, but anything is welcome!