Huancayo (where did you go)?

Claire and I did the tourist circuit in Cusco and Macchu Picchu and returned to the location of my internship, the incomparable Huancayo. It´s good to be back in a town that isn´t completely oversaturated by white people asking ¨CUANTO CUESTO?¨. Last night we visited David and Pilar´s restaurant in Sapallanga and gave the both of them and their adorable daughter the shoes that Claire and her sister purchased in Oregon. It was very nice to give back to the family that was so hospitable during my first three weeks at the school in Miraflores. Claire and I head to the wedding celebration of David´s brother this evening and head back to Lima tomorrow afternoon to see her off at the airport.

The blog is close to retirement, I have been on the move so much over the past few weeks that updating ( i.e. finding a reliable internet connection) has become a challenge. I hope to catch a night bus either tomorrow or Sunday for Mancora a beach community about 2 hours south of Ecuador to sip Pisco Sours and soak up the sun during my last week here. Thanks everyone for following and I´ll do what I can to at least post a picture or a few more words about my trip. Also, don´t forget to follow the twitter feed in the top left corner, I´ve posted a few photos via tweetpic there.

Sad to leave Peru but excited to return and see friends and family back in the Pacific North BEST.

Before I got grumpy...

Because 2k tourists answering their cell phones kind of ruins ancient sanctuaries, natural beauty and the general solitude of one of the wonders of the world.

It was a good day

Breakfast in the park: an egg, coffee, toast and an english language newspaper. Lots of time spent in a taxi speaking Spanish while traveling about the city. Bought a snake skin belt and a custom pair of sunglasses. Saw a museum about the Spanish Inquisition in Peru and ate beef heart while listening to the roar of the ocean in Barranco. Now I'm leaving for the airport to pick up Claire. Do I really have to come back and work 40+ hours a week?

Whirlwind Tour

Greetings from Pisco, Peru. We are in a community of about 80,000 that is still recovering from a 7.1 earthquake in 2007 that left much of the city in ruins. We saw temporary housing as we came in and many buildings show obvious damage from the quake. I've been busy during my extended vacation, hitting the beaches north of Trujillo and riding down dunes face first next to the desert oasis of Huacachina. As much as I brag about how great Oregon is these dunes were easily twice the size of those in and around Florence. Tomorrow we leave at 7 a.m. for Paracas National Wildlife Refuge where if we are lucky and the waters are calm we will take a boat ride around Islas Ballestas. If I don't make it up to Ecuador on this trip at least I will get the chance to see Peru's version of the Galapagos Islands. More later. I pick Claire up from the airport in 2 days!


YES!

Lima:

Where the constant winter wetness and high pollutant levels make downtown one of my least favorite places in the world.

Where Becky and I finished data input and summaries and recommendations about our deployment locations, in turn completing our OLPC internship in Peru.

Where I ate Mexican food for the first time in 6 weeks and realized how its accessibility in the states is deeply rooted in the American sense of patriotism.

Where I sat at a computer and got rained on and wondered exactly why you would put a computer under a hole in the ceiling.

Where I meet Claire in just 4 days!

The XO meets microwave technology

Just bumming away our last few hours in Huanchaco before catching a returning bus to Lima this evening. I stumbled across this video on twitter. Not entirely sure what happens in it because without sound it seems like a crazy Afghan dude just microwaving a XO laptop for the heck of it. Or perhaps it is just that, a crazy Afghan dude microwaving a XO laptop for the heck of it. I hope in his next field test they attempt a game of Buzkashi with OLPC's original model. Or, maybe I just prefer they leave the computers in class for the kids to use....

Greetings from (cloudy) Huanchaco

We are in Huanchaco, next to Trujillo, in and around the surf capital of Peru. I've finally ate ceviche, and while my stomach has been bubbly since, it was delicous. Tomorrow we plan on visiting Chan Chan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site older than the ruins at Macchu Picchu. It's cloudy, but we're going to make the most of the waves today and head out for lessons in the surf. You have to wear a wetsuit here because it's a little chilly. So I'm surfing in Oregon like conditions?

My Peruvian teaching career is over. We return to Lima on Monday to work with the Ministry of Education and tie up all loose ends from our 5 weeks working in the classroom while in Peru.

Newsmaker

The article says that Becky and I "dropped like angels from heaven." Unfortunately, this angel dropped with the Spanish comprehension of a 3 year old. Good thing his side kick taught ESOL in the United States.

Images from Chilca

While the interns have no idea what happens next, (swine flu means no more school, but perhaps we will train teachers or members of the local education department whose accroynm is UGEL but I prefer to refer to them as OHELL) Becky and I do know that today was our last day with the kids from Chilca. Above are a few pictures with the students and in the classroom. The third photo captures me striking an attempted replication of the ever creepy mannequins of Peru. These chaps adorn the front of an apparel outlet next to our 1 star hotel. If dodging pickpockets smelly meat and dried goat heads isn´t enough I am greeted every evening by by a one eyed male mannequin and his female counterpart with a stringed noose around her neck. Oh, Huancayo.


While I have had a few bouts of homesickness I am having a great time. It's sad though, that the students of our second school won't have the opportunity to learn as much about the XO as the students of Miraflores. We did what we could with the 6 class days we spent with the kids of Chilca.

As soon as I have some clue as to where and what the interns of Junin will be doing next I will post an update.

Becky leads class

This video comes from a class with the older kids on Friday. Tomorrow is our last day with students and then we will have either one or two days of instruction with the two teachers of the Chilca school. According to Becky I made the local newspaper after reporters visited on Friday. If I can turn up a link or picture I´ll make sure to update the blog.

Lazy Domingo

Today we visited the Sunday street market and I bought a painted gord, some tiny hats, a hemp bracelet and a neat wall decoration with Incan symbols. Afterward I went to the mall and bought a chicken tender sandwich at Burger King. There is something weird about those two events being so closely related...

We have two days left in class and find out more tomorrow about what the plan is for the extra week and a half that we won´t be working with children. Rumors are spreading about either working with teachers or working on a tan on the Peruvian coast. You can probably guess which option I am lobbying for.

Get a Shot of Protection

This Swine Flu Warning comes from 1976. 11 years before I bursted on the scene. 33 years before it cancelled schools in Peru and left 22 OLPC interns wondering what happens next.

Just Wash Your Hands

Claire linked this video in the comments section. She´s a keeper.

In other news OLPC intern extraordinaire Becky Young (my partner in tutelage) spent 4 hours uploading pictures yesterday, she has some amazing shots of the kids in class and the jungle trip. You can find those pictures here

Post Script

Dear Mom,

Yes, I will wash my hands more often.

Sincerely,

Lee

Swine Flu Haiku

Oh damn you swine flu
You create panic and fear
and cancel our school

Yep, the government of Peru has decided to cancel schools across the country out of fear of the epidemic. 12 people here in Huancayo have been diagnosed and 1,431 cases have been confirmed in Peru. Instead of staying in our school in Chilca until the 24th of July our last day will be the 15th. A brief article about the outbreak can be found here (I am pretty sure the dates of original vacation are incorrect).

I guess I´ll be heading to Ecuador or trying to find something to do with the extra time.

The Grand Llama Migration

For the first time during my three weeks in Peru I witnessed the enchanting, smelly, and oft spitting mammal (whose outline blesses all things tourist about Peru): the llama.

I was moved. A herd of 20 were being quickly directed past our school and into the mountains nearby. While I knew little about Peru´s treasured 4 legged beast I knew one thing, keep those sunglasses on. Thank goodness for the Synder Quality Llamas Brochure I recently read on the internet. From this quick read I feel I may harness the ability to herd llama´s in my free time. Maybe I´ll swing the idea by Claire and try to get a couple for our apartment next year. A few gems from the guide:

¨Before attempting any procedure which requires handling untrained Ilamas you will want to put on leather boots to protect the
top of your feet from injury if a llama accidentally steps on them with its hard toenails. Light gloves will protect your hands from incidental
scrape, and sunglasses or other protective eyewear will allow you to face a llama unflinchingly in the unlikely event of threatened spitting.¨

That´s cool, I tend to wear my sunglasses at night, during the day, and especially when around fuzzy wuzzy llamas.

¨Llamas instinctively oppose any pressure you apply against their body. It may be valuable to realize that pushing a Ilama to the
right will usually result in it leaning to the left.¨

So like backing up a trailer.

¨Catching a llama in a large field usually requires several people. ¨

Bring a friend!

For more lessons in the art of the llama click the link above.

Photo Update

Sorry a few of the pics weren´t rotated. I´ll leave that job for you. A little constructivist learning.

La Sierra, La Selva, La Sierra

Another Peruvian weekend is officially over. Today was a teachers holiday so Becky and I decided to visit a few of the other interns in the jungle this weekend. We left on Saturday and paid around 10 dollars for a 3 hour car ride east to a community called La Merced. We went from 11,000 feet in Huancayo to just around 4,000 feet and the trip back up into the mountains today has ment that I´m feeling a little elevation sickness. These conditions persist even though I took some medication recommended by the travel clinic at the Univeristy of Oregon for changes in elevation.

We stayed in a hotel called El Refugio, The Refuge, and enjoyed good company, good meals, and great scenery. I ate deer and mountain boar this weekend and also had tasty fruit smoothie made from apple sized fruit called cocona. I tried to find a link to more about this fruit but everything seems to be in Spanish, you can atleast see what it looks like. We visited waterfalls, a native amazonian community, and took a boat ride on a river where a few of the interns jumped in and swam around. I made a new friend, you can catch that video at the top of this post. I also ate immense amounts of oranges, mandarins and tangerines.

We are back in Huancayo now, and have found out that we will actually be staying in a hotel in the center of Huancayo for the next three weeks and commuting twenty blocks to a school in a community called Chilca. We saw the classroom today, and quite simply, it was depressing. It´s one room attached to a small storefront with dirt floors and around 40 desks crammed both inside and outside adobe walls. The conditions in Miraflores were definitely far superior. By the sounds of things the students at our next school are responsible for taking their XO´s home so that they can charge them because no functional power exists in the classroom for multiple computers. This could also be promising, meaning the students have spent more time with the computers that those at Miraflores, who were not allowed to take the computers home until Becky and I lobbyed the principal to start with the 5th and 6th graders.

From what I understood and was translated for me this school mostly caters to children of families that have migrated from the country side to the city looking for better employment. The majority of these families work in and around the market which I took photos of a week back. 2 teachers operate out of the tienda-school in Chilca.

We have our first day in class tomorrow, yet because of a series of national strikes against new government laws in Peru cars and buses may not run in Huancayo for the next three days. Class seems to be scheduled to go on as usual, but if things are anything like they were during a strike day last week we will have less students and less teachers than usual. I´ll try to keep the blog updated this weekend and give a better perspective of our experience in our 2nd and final school during this internship.

More Shad (new favorite music)

So this isn´t about Peru. But I´m watching it in Peru. And this is my blog about what I do in Peru. I´ll bet you don´t have to wait 15 minutes for it to load like I do. Lucky you.

One Last Day in Sapallanga

Well, three weeks in class comes to a close tomorrow when Becky and I have the fifth and sixth graders for one last time. The principal has informed us of a going away party at noon and afterward we pack our bags and head out to Pucara. Pucara is a town about 15 minutes away from Sapallanga, a little higher up in the Andes moutains, and a little farther from Huancayo. It´s been a good experience so far, like most travelers I´ve had my bouts of homesickness and food poisoning, especially following bad ice cream or after some chewy guinea pig.

Midterm report: I am having a great time and I feel that the trip has been beneficial for the kids in the classroom. We have introduced multiple programs that their teachers hadn´t even considered opening and brought to both the teachers and students attention the importance of technology in the advancement of not only Peruvian children but children everywhere. Today Becky had some great points when talking to the teachers about how everyone gets frustrated with technology but with some patience and some devotion it can be both beneficial and a great tool. She even mentioned to the kids that if they work hard with programs like Turtle Art, Etoys, and Scratch, they could one day make movies like Transformers 2 or Ice Age 3. It´s really about using these computers to put things in perspective for these kids. They do have a chance.

I´ve included a video of a few of the kids jumping rope today after class. I don´t think I ever really liked kids before this trip, I´ll miss the kids from Miraflores, even the banshees of segundo grado.



Another video


This video is from the first week. One of the girls brought her puppy to school and was keeping it in her sweater.

Getcha Meat and Potatoes

I visited Super Pollon (Super Chicken, the rooster even has a cape on the sign) late last week and had quite the plate of food.




P.S. I finished everything but one bite of the chorizo, it was like a cold and especially firm hotdog.