Feliz año nuevo

Hike in Tarata: me, Ashlen and Seamus


Host family at Christmas: Lucho, Sonia, Pamela, Yupi and me!


New Years Eve: me, Greg, Rose, Ceci (Greg´s host sister), Ashlen, Jess, Cesar (friend of the JVs who graciously invited us to his beach house)

The past few weeks have been a collision of emotion. It´s been difficult to be away from my family for the first Christmas ever. While I had the chance to Skype with all 22 people who were having Christmas dinner at my family´s house, it was interrupted by slow internet which was not fun. But it was great to see everyone!

The sadness I felt missing family and friends during the holidays was partly made better by the presence and love of my host family, the other volunteers and the families of the second year volunteers who brought Christmas presents from home and were wonderful to get to know...plus treated us to pizza!

I got the chance to get out of Tacna for a day the Tuesday befor Christmas. Ashlen and I went with Seamus, his mom, brother and sister for a day hike outside of the small town of Tarata. It´s a beautiful area in the mountains less than 2 hours away from Tacna at about 10,0000 feet. It was great to get out and walk (though a bit difficult at that altitude) for the day. It looks more like what our home in Andahuaylillas will look like. It´s also really close to our Mes de Misión site (see below).

Christmas Eve (pictured above) was a new and different experience. We all went to Christmas Eve mass here in Habitat at 7:30. At the end of the mass, blessings were said in all of the languages present: Spanish, English, Quechua, Aimara and French...it was a very special experience. After mass, we walked to the houses of three families in Habitat who needed some extra support for Christmas gifts and food and sang Christmas carols. We were slowed briefly at the end because Father Fred got a flat tire. It was one of those - how many Americans does it take to change a tire while a street dog stands in the way - situations! Then Ashlen (who made it into this blog several times!) and I headed to her host family´s house (my host aunt). At midnight, everyone goes out into the streets to shoot off fireworks...many of which just made a lot of noise! Then we had champagne toasts, opened gifts and had a delicious dinner of turkey, rice and salad at 1 am...finally going to bed at 2:30. On Christmas day, we slept in then had lunch at another aunt´s house followed by Christmas mass. I ended the day with my family Skype!

Yesterday for New Years Eve, all of the new volunteers headed to the beach (about 45 minutes from Tacna). Some went with their host families and the rest of us went to the house of a friend, Cesar. Ashlen and I once again headed out to see our host siblings for a bit. Then at midnight everyone went to the shore to watch the crazy amount of fireworks being set off. I´m finding it difficult to describe the amount of fireworks and firecrackers that were happening. They were being shot off high into the air and would defiantly be illegal for anyone to use who wasn´t a trained professional in the US. If you´ll notice in the picture above (in which I have my eyes half closed, but unfortunately I don´t have another pic), it´s a bit fuzzy...that´s the smoke from all of the fireworks! Then we headed back to Cesar´s house to cook chorizo and anticucho (cow heart on a stick)...please see my facebook profile pic to see this experience. Because I´m a texture person, it was a bit hard for me to eat the anticucho. Not to mention the fact that earlier that day we had gone to the market to watch and smell the heart being chopped up...next to all of the overwhelming smells of a meat market.

In addition to the fireworks I learned about many Peruvian New Year´s traditions:
1. Yellow is the color for luck in love, money and health for the coming year. Everyone was wearing yellow hats, necklaces, glasses and underwear...you couldn´t walk into a Tacna market last week without being overwhelmed by yellow undies.
2. To get past bad lack or situations from the past year, you dress up a doll in old clothing and burn it at midnight. I really wish I had a good picture of this because it was very interesting.
3. Eat 12 grapes at midnight for luck for each of the months in the upcoming year.
4. We held onto some seeds and corn for luck as well.

Tomorrow I leave for Mes de Misión with Colegio Miguel Pro. 6 volunteers, one teacher and a couple ex-students will lead a group of about 30 students (equivalent of sophomores) on what sounds like a month of Sierra Service Project. We will be living in and working with the town of Ticaco (outside of Tarata where we hiked last week). I won´t have access to internet or phone for the month. If you´d like to send mail, please send it the second week of January because it takes three weeks to get here and I´ll be leaving the second week in February for Lima then on to Andahuaylillas. Side note: when I get back from Mes de Misión, I´m going to make an appeal for letters because they´re wonderful to receive...especially with pictures of you and I together!

Please be thinking of Mateo who had a miss-step out of a bus a couple weeks ago and hurt his ankle. He´s in a cast now and will hopefully have it removed next week.