El encontro de la Semana Santa

Tonight's the big night! This is the night that we heard the party goes until 2 or 3 in the morning partying in the streets, living the Catholic life :) We were prepared. Took naps after lunch in preparation for a late night. We got all ready and went to the plaza early to take pictures of the flower carpets before they were ruined. (Last night it rained so we decided to stay in the house than go out and watch the procession in the rain) We were hoping that it wouldn't rain again tonight. However we were not so lucky. As were were walking around it started to drizzle, except Millie (the Australian) was convinced that the drizzle was a complete downpour. I was teasing her that she would never be able to survive in Seattle if she thought this drizzle was serious. We decided to go to a restaurant that has a balcony that over looks the plaza, Via Via, to have a drink and wait out the rain and for the procession to reach the plaza. As we were sitting there enjoying our wonderful desert and drinks and the rain picked up and washed away all of the flower carpets. We kept asking our waiter if the procession would still happen in the rain and he assured us, while looking at us a little crazy, that of course it would.

We continued to wait and wait and wait

until around 9 p.m. the police truck drove around the plaza announcing over a loud speaker that the procession was postponed until 3 am the next morning. At this point it had been raining cats and dogs we made the decision to just try to go home and hopefully find a taxi that would take us. Funny story, we were not the only people that wanted taxis. There were no taxis to be found anywhere. We bit the bullet and ran home. Literally. Rolled up the pant legs

and crossed what use to be streets that were now rushing rivers and ran the 10 minutes home. Ayacucho doesn't have a storm drain system so when it rains like it did, the roads turn into rivers. A few of the girls were wearing their flip flops, lets just say that there were a few times when the Ayacuchan men were running down the street to retrieve one of the lost flip flops for the girls. We were quite the show to say the least. 6 gringas running through the streets

of Ayacucho, without rain coats, sopping wet and losing their shoes as they tried to cross the streets. The water was up to my knees on the larger streets, just sheer madness. I have never seen so much water in the middle of a city / had as much fun running home in my life.

Once we were home it was s

hower and warm pjs then to bed so that I could wake up at 4 am to go see the procession that I had heard so much about. We knew the procession was suppose to be at 3 am which in Peruvian time means it might start at 5am. So my roommate, Kate, and I made it to the plaza by 5 am. We made it to see the procession just in time and watch the meeting of Mary and Jesus. It was the most elaborate procession of all. Mary left from one church with all women following her then from the other side of the city Jesus left with all the male lawyers following him. There were then 2 smaller floats with Mary and Jesus that were waiting in the Plaza. Once the big Jesus and Mary arrived at the Plaza the smaller floats went to meet them. For the floats to meet the people who were carrying them had to make the floats bow, this means that the people in the front of the float had to kneel while carrying the float. Once the smaller Mary meet the larger Jesus and the smaller Jesus meet the larger Mary. The larger floats walked to the center and meet each other. I can see why this is the most popular procession of the week, it was lovely to watch.

Santo Lunes

Today I went to work with the children in the prison like normal then rounded up some energy to continue celebrating Semana Santa. Tonight's activities included going to the cultural center with a few of the girls from the house to watch a talent show of traditional dances. Our program director, Marisol, has a friend who is in a cultural dance group and let us know that the show was happening. On our way to the cultural center we walked through the plaza to see all the flower carpets being made. Flower carpets are pretty self-explainable, different groups of people come together in the plaza and draw elaborate pictures on the street out of flowers and colored sand. It was beautiful and very interesting to see how the talented kids of Ayacucho were able to make these amazing pictures out of sand and flowers!

After a quick stroll around the plaza to look at the flower carpets we headed to the cultural center to watch some dance groups. It was really fun to see the different groups dancing. There were groups that danced tradition dances from the city and the country. It was fun to see the difference in the dancing style from the country to the city. Each type tells a story of how life is lived in that area. Most of the dances have to do

with working in the fields or finding love.

On our way home from the cultural center we happened to run into the procession in the plaza for tonight. We stayed a while and enjoyed the procession with out joining the chaos of following the float down the street and into the church. We had great timing to

see the procession but it was sad once we realized that all the hard work that was put into the flower carpets were trampled over :(

Domingo de Ramos

Palm Sunday marks the first day of the Holy week, which is a huge deal for everyone in Ayacucho. Rudy, the program director for CCS, has been proudly bringing in every newspaper article that he can find about Semana Santa in Ayacucho. One paper proudly reported that the festivities here are among the best in all of the Spanish speaking countries in the world.

From just today I have to say that I agree with them. I started my day with going to Catholic Mass at the church in the Plaza. As we were sitting through mass, huge fireworks were going off outside making the whole church shake. It was an utterly frightening experience. I was confused as to whether I was in a war zone or a holy zone of a church. After about the 4th huge explosion, my roommate Kate and I decided it was time to leave.

As we were exiting the church we happened onto a parade going through the plaza. This was just the start to the day.

After lunch we took a taxi to a street party near the airport. Street party does not

explain the madness of the gathering. We pulled up along side dozens and dozens of llamas and donkeys decorated for the procession that

would start from here. We made our way into

the street party and were pleasan

tly surprised with the beer tent. Here in Peru, a 3rd w

orld country, they had a whole tent full to the top of FREE beer and chicha. We quickly figured

out that you go and ask for a bottle of beer and a cup. Then walk around and find n

ew friends to drink with. The tradition is to get a beer, then invite others to drink with you. Let me tell you how easy it is to make new friends when you are some of the only "gringas" and have a full beer in your hands. We were given Peru

vian flags and waved them proudly as we met our new friends and danced and drank together. We even met the Mayor of Ayacucho, he is Rudy's cousin. It was a fun gathering of all the towns people dressed in traditional dress ready to parade from the Airport all through the town and end in the Plaza.

After a few hours of fun we staked out a spot on the street to watch the parade. The parade

included all the decorated llamas, donkeys, horses, bands and dancers. We watched most of the parade go by then joined in. We followed the parade into the town Plaza and as we got near the Plaza we caught up with some of our new friends we meet at the street party. They invited us to join them in the parade. So Millie and I joined in. We paraded through the plaza, and all you could hear is "Mira, gringas" we were the only people in the parade that were not

dressed in traditional attire which did not help us

to blend into the procession line. We processed and danced in the plaza having a grand ol' time.

After the parade we were told that Jesus would be coming to the Plaza on a donkey. So we found a seat on the curb and waited and waited and waited. It has been a month that I have been in Peru and I still don't have the time down right. We were told that Jesus would be entering at 4pm. Well we should have known to not believe that and add 2 to 3 hours to that and that is when it would actually start. Somehow we attracted all the children in the area to come and hang out with us while we were waiting for the grand entrance of Jesus. We passed the time teaching them English kid songs and they tried toteach us Spanish kid songs. Finally at around 6pm Jesus made his entrance on the donkey. I had pictured in my

head someone would be dressed up like Jesus riding the donkey into town. Well that wasn't the case. Jesus was a statue that was placed on a donkey then surrounded by Army and Police men and women protecting the statue of Jesus. Only in Peru would this happen. Somehow in the midst of trying to get a good picture, Millie and I got swept into the procession. The best way to describe the experience is that we were apart of a Mosh Pit for Jesus. We got in the procession easy enough but could not get out once we were being smashed and smooshed as 100s of Peruvians were fighting to get as close as possible to the Jesus statue. Luckily though the procession only went half way around the plaza and ended in the church. This was our escape and we took it. All in all today was the best way I have ever started a celebration for Easter.

Vilcashuaman - Inca Ruins

Today we got up at the crack of dawn. Said goodbye to one of our housemates, Patti, as she went back to the states and we went to visit Inca ruins in the town of Vilcashuaman. This city was second in command for the Incan Empire. It is three hours south of Ayacucho. We got in our tour bus at 6am and drove 3 hours to our first stop at Largo Pumacocha.

Largo Pumacocha is home to Inca ruins. The largest were of bathing sites and different areas around the lake that were used for different ceremonies by the Incas. After walking around there we boarded Tio Pancho's row boat. He paddled me and 4 of my friends and a Peruvian woman back to the other end of the lake where the car was waiting to take us to

our next site.

Our next stop was the city of Vilcashuaman. During the time when the spanish invaded Peru they destroyed most Incan ruins, as they prayed to their sun gods, which isn't what they wanted, as they wanted to spread Catholicism. So it was quite surprising that the town still has as much ruins as it does. In fact its the second biggest site of Incan Ruins, after Macchu Picchu, and the only reason Macchu Picchu is still around is due to the fact that the Spanish didn't know it was there! Vilcashuaman was strategically placed in the conjunction between the Cusco-Costal road that ran east and west and the main Andes road that ran north and south.

We were very luckily our tour guide, Carlos, speaks english, because we got so much information and history about the Incan times and also about the influence the Spanish have had. This picture is of a catholic church that was literally built straight on top of the Inca sun temple. We were not able to go inside the church to see how, if any, meshing of the old Inca spiritual beliefs mixed with the Christian beliefs.

On the way home we stopped at a forest of Puya Raimondi tree forest. This cactus like tree

only grows in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia. The tree has a life span of 100 years and can grow up to 10 meters (32 feet) high. When the tree does flower it can have up to 1,700 flowers, a world record. The plant only flowers once in its life span then releases it seeds and dies. The trees are like nothing I have ever seen before! It would have been nice to see one in bloom and see where all the flowers fit, but unfortunately I was not able too.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, very long, but fantastic as the Incan times are so interesting. I think the worst part was driving there, as it was long and windy around the Andean mountain ranges.

The most adventurous part of the day was the driving around the itty bitty dirt roads. We were very precariously driving along cliff edges. At one point we drove over a little bridge made of wooden planks laid on the ground. Very scary when you're thousands of meters high!! Some of the girls had their seatbelts on...but i thought if we fell down that cliff, there would be no hope, regardless of whether we're wearing them or not! I have figured out this might be part of the reason the so many people are so devout to their spirituality here... it's out of necessity when you are driving or even walking around the streets of Peru :)

The Ayacucho Zoo

On Fridays the CCS volunteers are allowed to take the kids who live at the prison with their mothers outside to the city. This was the first Friday that we were able to take the kids out to the zoo.

It was a very eventful morning! As we enter the prison to pick up the kids we were waiting to find out which kids got permission to go with us, but the paper had be "lost." Marisol, our program coordinator

, ran all over the prison trying to talk to all the different people who ran the prison to find out what happened to this. She couldn't find any of the officials in their offices. We later found out why. There had been a disturbance of some sort that morning which caused the prison to go into lock down. A whistle was blown and the ladies all lined up in rows in the courtyard. We were not sure what was happening and were escorted to what I guess you

would call the entry way. While the women were getting accounted for we were left waiting a speculating what was going to happen while we were all locked in. In the end my imagination was far more active than what really happened. The women had to wait in the courtyard while the guards checked each cell. Marisol saw an opportunity to talk to all the women while they would be forced to listen (or at least pretend). In the past week I had been having a hard time getting kids to come to the Cuna. Und

erstandably so, a strange white girl has shown up and all of a sudden takes you away from your mom for the morning, I think I would rather stay with my mom. Marisol stood up on the patio platform and started lecturing all the women in the prison on the importance of sending them to school and not promoting violence in the prison. After telling all the women that they need to lead by example and teach the kids how to behave in the real world, or these same kids will be back in here when he/she is older, we were bombarded with kids.

There are 13 kids who live in the prison between the ages of 1 and 4. Of those 13 we had 10

that wanted, or their mothers wanted them to go to the zoo with us. 45 minutes after walking in the prison to pick up the kids 8 volunteers were finally walking out with 10 kids. I ended up with 1 year old Jonas on my hip and 3 year old Davis holding my other hand. We all piled into the van and were off to the zoo. It was so much fun to see the kids reactions to the little things in life that I take for granted seeing everyday. The kids loved sitting on our laps and looking out the windows. They would yell to each other "Mira los perros" Look at the dogs. There are hundreds of dogs that roam the streets of Ayacucho. I never thought that seeing that would be so foreign to someone. I forget that these kids technically live in the city, but never can leave their current home. It brought a smile to my face just watching them basically watch the world turn and enjoy every second they got to experience.

Once at the zoo we all had our kids and took them around to see all the different animals. It was so much fun and funny to see how these kids interpret what they saw. It took a couple of animal exhibits for them to understand that not all animals are cats and dogs. They would stand memorized at the animals for hours I think, if we let them. After visiting a condor,

parrots, monkeys, penguins, alpacas, llamas, vicunas, deer, and a taxidermy elephant we bought the kids some cookies and juice and said goodbye to all the animals. We loaded all the kids back into the van. After babysitting as my only source of income for so long I got

into the habit of strapping kids into the safe and secure car seats, which normally sat in a huge tank of a car, just incase of an accident the kids would be fine. You could imagine the heart attack I was suffering when we just had the kids sitting on the seats or in our laps as we drove in a country where I say a prayer before stepping of each sidewalk to cross the street, hoping I will make it across safely.

The car ride back was almost as fun as the time we spent at the zoo. The ride to the prison is only partway paved and the rest is really bumpy dirt roads. The two kids sitting in the back with me, Miriam and Davis, figured out that if you open your mouth while driving over bumps you make quite a funny sound. Well if that wasn't enough entertainment for one ride we were treated to more by Davis. While he was trying to make his funny sounds, it simultaneously relaxed him. While he was in this state of relaxation his eyes would roll back in his head, head tilt farther back and he would fall asleep until the next bump that would jostle him awake and then repeat the cycle again until we got to the prison. I think that we had 4 of the 10 fast asleep when we return them to their mothers. I myself needed a nap after lunch to recuperate from the excursion!

My volunteer job for the next 3 months

For the next three months I will be starting my own preschool class for 13 1-3 year old kids who are currently living with their mothers in prison. In Peru, if you are a suspect for a crime you are put in jail while they are investigating and conducting your trail. Then if you are found guilty, the time that you have already spend in jail counts towards you sentence. It is also allowed for kids under the age of 4 to live with their mothers in jail.

The inmates must pay for their rent in the jail; and if they do not pay, time is added to their sentence. The way that inmates make their money is the male prisoners weave Mantas (Peruvian blankets) while the women embellish them with embroidery, then they are sold and the inmates use the money they make to pay their rent. Most of the inmates are in prison for drug trafficking (as there are huge Coca fields on the other side of the mountains from here that supply the European market.) I have been told that most of the women in jail are not able to feed their families, so they knowingly take the risk of trafficking drugs once to be able to feed their families. The drug traffickers usually carry around 10 kilos of Cocaine on their backs and walk to the drop off point. The drug lords then call the authorities to alert them that someone will be trafficking drugs. When the police are busy with the people who have 10 kilos, a larger trafficker drives through undetected. It is a sad situation, that these women see drug trafficking as the only way to feed their families, when they are all so talented in making the typical handicrafts of the region.

The 13 kids that are living with their moms in prison, have never had any formal education, or any structured setting at that. The kids usually just run around the courtyard, while their mothers are working on their mantas or other task for the day.

For the next three months I will be gladly getting my prison tats(see picture to right) 4 days a week, in lieu of a full body search to enter the prison. I will collect the kids from the women's section of the prison and take them to another area called La Cuna. La Cuna is a very old concrete 3 room area that has been dedicated to the children of the prison. However, no one has used the Cuna in quite a while. The most recent poster that I saw in the room was 2006. The floor is half tiled and half sub-flooring showing. There are 3 or 4 bookcases that line one wall but not a book in sight. We have a slide with a broken step (it has already chalked up a bloody nose from one of the kids trying to get to the top to slide down) and a few chairs. I walk in with the kids and nothing that I have set up the day before remains, so the kids help mop up the water that is left on the floor, then we set up our chairs in a circle and start our morning.

I am still not sure what I will be doing with these kids. I planned a whole day on my first day then took one look at them staring at me blankly and threw all my lesson plans out the window. I just knew that we would be no where near learning the names of our basic body parts well enough to fill out a poster I had made and play Simon says as well as attempt Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Spanish.

Let the games begin... I am sure I will have plenty of funny stories that will come up in the next few months with these kids.

Llama Trekking to El Pueblo Rosas Pampa

The people of Rosas Pampa

The lake that we hiked to for lunch.

The gang in front of the one of the waterfalls we hiked too.

Muchas llamas

Saturday our one of our staff members Alejo and his son Jason took all of us girls on a Llama Trek up into the mountains. We left at 7am and drove up into the mountains armed with bread and candy for the village kids. Our first stop was in a little town called Santa Fe. We got out at what looked like a deserted town, however once one kid came and saw us he must of called the troops because all of a sudden like 15 people came to greet us. The moms of the town all had hand knitted hats and coin purses that we could buy, I got an authentic peruvian hat with earflaps! We passed out some bread and candies to our new friends and loaded back in the van and continued up into the mountains. We drove to the town of Rosas Pampa. This town is about 2 hours away from Ayacucho, and is very isolated. We brought them bread and candy, since they do not have access to stores to get it on a regular basis. The town itself is made up of around 300 people and about 250 of them are kids. Alejo explained to us that it was common to have 7 or 8 kids in this town, because there is no TV there.

After getting a little bit acclimated and enjoying some Coca tea, to help with the altitude sickness. We started our trek up into the mountains from this pueblo. We walked for 2 hours to a beautiful lake where we at our lunch. The lake was breathtakingly beautiful! We were surrounded by lush green landscape and snowcapped mountains off in the distance. After lunch we continued further up the mountain to our highest point of 15,600 ft into the Andes. Once at the top Alejo and the van were waiting for us. On the way back down the mountain we stopped to visit this really sweet old lady who was kind enough to show us how they lived in the mountains. It is customary to have 3 itty bitty houses per family. One house is where the family sleeps. Another for the kitchen and a final house is off in distance is another one that is used to store llama poop. That is right, a house just for poop. Since they live above the tree line, there is no firewood to start fires, so they use llama poop. We left what bread we had left with her. She was the sweetest little old lady, who was so friendly but only spoke Quecha. I felt so bad that I couldn't communicate with her without the help of our guides.

It was a lovely day with all the girls in the house going on this beautiful and fun Llama Trek.

My new home in Ayaucho, Peru

My new home until June

It has been a week, a very busy week at that, since I arrived in Ayacucho. I got here last Sunday and we have been going non-stop since. All the volunteers are really nice and I am having a great time getting to know all of them. We have quite a mix of cultures in the house, American, Canadian, English and Australian. All together we have 11 girls living in the "Gringo" house. The first week we got city tours and a tour of a mountain town an hour out of Ayacucho. We also spent our week helping at the prison with festivities for International Woman's Day. (It sounds a lot scarier that it is, so don't worry) Our first day of volunteering (Tuesday) all the volunteers went to the prison to watch a talent show that the women had prepared. Most of the talents included dancing, singing or skits. Wednesday, I went with a few other girls to a youth drop in center at a market just up the street from my house. The center is for the kids who either work in the market or their parents work in the market. It is a place for them to come and just be a kid. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them for the morning. Except, I don't think that they have ever seen a redhead before. I made the mistake of wearing my hair down that day and the kids decided that they wanted a strand as a souvenir, so they kept try snatching a piece from my head, a little painful and awkward. The next two days I went back to the prison to help with the conclusion of the week of festivities. I spent most of my time with kids coloring and reading Goodnight, Moon a million times in Spanish.

Paragliding in Lima

When we got back to Lima on our to do list was paragliding off a cliff in Miraflores. After trekking a canyon why not run off a cliff with a strange man attached to your back, right? Friday morning after breakfast Angie and I walked to the Park of Love, where they do the paragliding and grilled the owner about all the risks and exactly what would happen during the flight. After watching a larger grown man take off and not crash we decided that it would be safe and we signed on the dotted lines. Then got strapped into the parachute and pilot and ran off the cliff. Once we were in the air and I realized that I would be okay I started to relax and enjoy my 10 minute ride high above a busy street, cliffs, shopping mall and beach.

At one point my pilot was talking to me and said that we might need to land on the beach. I was thinking that he was trying to scare me and it was just a joke, so I brushed it off and laughed a little. A minute or so later we turned around to start heading back to the park and he told me, “Look down there the white went down. They were the ones that took off after us.” And sure enough I looked down and saw a white parachute on the ground in between the cliffs and the road. I guess the wind had changed directions while we were flying and we had a hard time getting high enough to clear the cliffs. That is when the pilot said that we might be landing on the beach (so it wasn’t a joke). He was able to get us high enough to be flying safely but the white parachute wasn’t as lucky. They landed safely but had to then pack up the parachute and catch a cab back up to the top of the cliffs.

I had a blast paragliding. When it was over I was joking with the owner that next time I wanted them to do tricks while I was up there. Then we got to talking and he said that he would be coming to Ayacucho in a few weeks and that he had pilots here that paraglide. So who knows more paragliding might be in my future.

Arequipa and Cañón del Colca

Our original plan was to visit Manchu Picchu together, but the rainstorms and mudslides changed our plans. Instead we flew an hour south of Lima to Arequipa. Arequipa is nicknamed the “White City” as it is surrounded by mountains; however if you visit in the summer (like we did) the mountains are not full of snow, and it doesn’t look like a white city. It was a beautiful city. When we got in we talked to the hostel about different options we had on visiting the Cañón del Colca. The Cañón del Colca is the world’s deepest canyon. Our hostel explained that there were two options on seeing the canyon; one was to take a bus tour and sit in the bus all day just getting out at picture taking viewpoints. The other option was to trek the canyon. The hostel people said that this was the best option, because you get to go down into the canyon and see how the locals live there. That sounded fun, but hiking down the world’s deepest canyon seemed a little difficult. After chatting some more with the hostel workers they told us that it was just a 4 hour hike down then we would be staying in bungalows and able to hangout at the swimming pools and enjoy the scenery. Since we knew we were getting picked up at 4 am we figured that was so that we wouldn’t be hiking in the heat of the day and get to spend the afternoon at the pool.

Boy, were we wrong. We got picked up at 4 am and loaded a bus to drive 4 hours to the canyon. Once we were there we stopped at Cruz del Cóndor, this is the highest point in the canyon and the best spot to see the enormous 3 meter condors flying overhead. After a bit of bird watching, we drove farther down the road to meet our canyon guide. For our 2-day trek, Angie and I trekked with girls from Ireland, Belgium, Italy and our Peruvian guide. Once we were at the top of the canyon looking down and l was listening as our guided explained where we would be hiking to I noticed she said it was a 4 hour hike to the 1^st town. In this town we will be having lunch then continuing for another 3 hours where we will spend the night. The next day it would be a 3 hour hike straight up the mountain to catch the bus back to the city. Whoa! What happened to the short 4 hour hike to the pools? This tour is the Peruvian version of Gilligan’s Island. We thought we signed up for a 4 hour hike and it was really a 11 hours hiking in total and 9 miles over two days of walking up and down the world’s deepest canyon.

All in all it was an amazing trip and I loved it, once I was safely at the top on the 2^nd day. I would not recommend just decided to hike a canyon one day with out training at least a little bit. Next time I will also get hiking boots, Angie and I learned really fast the tennis shoes are not quite appropriate for hiking steep gravel paths, as we fell a few times on the way down. Thankfully we were with a group of girls who had just about as much hiking experience as we did, next to nothing.

Now that I have hiked the Cañón del Colca, I guess the Grand Canyon should be nothing in comparison. Maybe that will be Angie and my next adventure…. we will see once the soreness of this trek wears off.

I love visitors!

I successfully talked one of my college friends, Angie, to fly down to Peru and travel with me for a little over a week. I was so excited to see her and travel around with her. For those of you who know Angie and I, we are probably 2 of the loudest Americans and stand out like a sore thumb in Peru, since blonde and redheads are not very common down here. We were told we are very exotic looking, which is funny to me. Since blending was going to be an obvious issue for us, we embraced the stares and cat calls that came from every corner of the streets and had quite an adventure. We could not walk down the streets without everyone one staring at the blonde and the red head. I have been told that I am as red as a crab by a little boy in the airport, his mother then tried to convince me that I am allergic to the sun and should try to not go outside as much as possible (for the record, I thought that I only had a little healthy glow. It is just my healthy glow is a little redder than the Peruvians caramel coloring.) I was told that my hair looks like it is on fire, while Angie looks like Brittany Spears. The two of us caused a ruckus everywhere we went. We have been asked out and proposed too more in the week we were together, than I think even pop-stars have been asked. But don’t worry Mom, Dad and Erik so far the offers haven’t been all that tempting, at least not yet.

We spent our first weekend in Lima, hanging out on the beach, eating wonderful ceviche, learning to salsa from locals and catching up. On Monday we flew to Arequipa in the south of Peru. We stayed in the white city until Thursday when we made our way back to Lima for one last weekend of funJ