Party On

by Alisha

The party is full on in our site this week. Chota's "international fiesta" San Juan Bautisita has a parade, concerts, bullfights, fireworks, beauty pagents, and competitions in horse riding, dance, and moto-cross. Artisans and food vendors line the streets and with thousands of people coming to the fiesta each year, the new plaza is packed with people every night. It is a lot to take in.

My favorite event thus far was the Marinera dance competition even though I didn't make it to the end of the competition. Scheduled to start at 3:00pm, the competition started at 4:30pm. The first round ended at 6:30pm. This left semi-finals and finals to be completed and we made our exit at this point. I'm much more patient than I was when I first arrived in Peru, but the length of events and meetings can still be a shock to my system.


Two days of the fiesta are spent at San Juan pampa (field). A variety of competitions are held through these two days and literally thousands of people (I've heard between 50,000 to 80,000 people) stake out a spot on the field or on the surronding hillsides and sit and sit and sit, all day long. It was fun seeing the girls from surrounding comunities compete to be the "Flower of Chota." Again, my ability to last a full day let alone two days waned.

Here comes the international part of the fiesta. Bullfighters from Spain, Mexico, Columbia, and Peru compete for three days killing a total of 18 bulls. My first and possibly my last bullfighting experience was yesterday. I am somewhat torn on bullfighting. In one respect, I can understand why it is considered an artform full of tradition and spectacle. That being said, it was really brutal. One part of the fight includes a picador (lancer) who comes out on horseback to stab the bull with a large lance. This was in and of itself disturbing along with the killing of the bulls of course, but one of the bulls also took down the horse and the horseman. Both escaped injury, but it was horrifying to watch. More horrifying was when the matador from Mexico was gored, twice. According to news reports he will recover after undergoing surgury.


The party continues on through the weekend and while it is really an impressive event. It is hard not to keep thinking about the amount of money spent this week by the local government. While some parts of the fiesta are sponsered by private companies, the majority of the funding comes from the local government's budget. In addition, after 9 months of work and an obscene amount of money, our new plaza is now complete. It looks generally like the old plaza and its design included the addition of four traffic lights. It is hard to believe that the first traffic lights in town arrived before potable water or the electrification of surrounding communities.

Vacationing in Ica & Arequipa

By Alisha

My youngest brother, Kyle, and his friend, Ethan, visited Peru! We spent a little bit of time in Lima and then headed south and visited the departments of Ica and Arequipa.

Ethan, Kyle, and Alisha in Lima hanging out with our pigeon friends
In the department of Ica we checked out the Islas Ballestas (nicknamed the poor man's Galapagos), which are full of marine life. We saw dolphins, Humboldt penguins, Peruvian boobies, cormorants, sea lions, and pelicans.Outside of Ica is the Oasis of Huacachina. We tried sand surfing and had a great time on a dune buggy tour of the sand dunes.
We took a flight over the Nazca Lines, a series of geoglyphs in the desert. There are hundreds of figures thought to be created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE. Above is the best picture I got during our flight over some the figures, the whale.

Next stop was Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Where we also visited the Colca Canyon. The canyon is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and is home to Andean Condors.

Chachani - one of three volcanoes surrounding the city of Arequipa

Overlooking the cathedral and Plaza de Armas in Arequipa
Condor at the Colca Canyon

One Year

By Alisha

Micah and I are just a few days away from completing our first year in Peru. When we first arrived in Lima last year we didn't know what to expect. I only knew a few words in Spanish and Micah had little experience working with youth, but I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I think our transition into life and work here in Peru has been pretty seamless. This is not to say that we haven't felt frustrated, questioned what we are doing, or wondered if our work is really benefiting anyone. In fact, those are things that I think about on an almost daily basis. Our feelings of contentment in our work and life here are really a testament to the people that we have met during the last year. We have been fortunate to have really understanding and accommodating host-families both during training and now in our site. We have made lasting friendships with people in our community and with other Peace Corps volunteers. These relationships have been really important in feeling at home here in Peru.

However, while I was thinking about how to summarize my impressions of our first year in Peru, I realized that no matter how comfortable I feel in my community, with the language, or with Peruvian culture in general there are always things that continue to surprise me.

When Micah and I first arrived in our community I knew that we would get a lot stares, and that was understandable. People were curious about the really tall, really white people hanging around. I really didn't mind whistles, staring (I mean stop-everything-you-are-doing, no-shame, 1-foot-from-my-face staring), or whispered comments. In fact, I expected this response and might have actually been disappointed if no one seemed to take an interest in us. I also expected that this interest would generally wear off over time...I was wrong. After being in our community for 9 months, the stares and comments continue. At times, it feels as if interest in us has intensified. The allure of being the topic of conversation has diminished and being called “gringo” twenty times while walking across town can be really annoying.

We have also encountered misconceptions and interesting questions about both ourselves and the United States.

• Cuy (guinea pig) is a popular food here and many people find it interesting that in the States guinea pigs are pets. While having a discussion with a student in one of our youth groups about this difference, she told us that her high school teacher had told her that instead of eating guinea pigs in the States we eat rats. Micah and I looked at eat other and confidently responded that her teacher was mistaken. We don’t eat rats.
• Another person we met was under the impression that we only eat canned food.
• We like to have kids try and guess our ages when they ask us how old we are. Micah tends to get outrageous guesses, like one kid who thought he was 56 years old.
• My host mom was convinced that there must not be potatoes in the US based on my lackluster performance in potato peeling. I tried to explain the concept of a vegetable peeler as opposed to using an unwieldy dull knife, but it was a lost cause.
• Mothers are also very interested in what Micah and I may have eaten to have caused us to be as tall as we are. We tried to explain the combination of vitamins and genetics, but have most mothers seem to be content only when they hear that we eat a lot less rice than Peruvians and a lot more vegetables.

We are sure that the next 15 months will be just as interesting as the first 12 have been!