Famous!

I guess I should update you all on whats going on with me. So, the soccer game! First of all, on Wednesday, I was on the local radio here!! Well, my name was. Jared was interviewed (they only like to interview guys here. Girls are completely overlooked, which is the problem wit girls soccer. Plus, he is the one that speaks spanish.) and he told the radio announcers our names, ages, and positions. He didn´t say I had a position, though. He said that I just started playing soccer, and that I usually play basketball, but that I am pretty good for just starting. Then, on Thursday AND Friday, I was in the local newspaper-La Hora!!! There were pictures of Jared, me, Kami, Diana, and Amy on both days, and a small article attached to them both days!! Then, at the tournament on Saturday night, we played in a stadium (which was really just a field with bleachers, but we played on turf under the lights.) against two other university teams and a club team. And guess what...... We won!!!!!! We beat the first team 7-1, and then we beat the university girls we always play with 5-1 I think. It was insane!! Kami, Jaylynn, Amy, and Diana played REALLY well! (They are the girls that played soccer before coming to Peru.) There was a reporter there that took a bunch of pictures, we were covered by a local news station, and a couple people asked to take pictures with me. Basically what I am trying to say is that I am famous :) Haha actually, I am just thankful that I didn´t play terribly and embarrass myself! I didn´t play all that well, but at least I worked hard, and I don´t think I looked too idiotic. Unfortunately, though, we all wore cleats at the tournament, and I have never played soccer in cleats in my life- I think I only ever wore them for softball in middle school- so I wasn´t used to wearing them, and I rolled my ankle. It´s pretty puffy and swollen, and it hurt a lot last night, but it is feelin a bit better today, so I´m sure it will be back to normal in no time! So thats the update on soccer- basically we are famous here. :)

So with my project, UNIR, we had a couple more meetings this week, and they went amazinly well! We had another meeting with the students, and now we are up to 15. I´m not sure if all of them will be able to make it, and its moving along really slowly, but its gonna happen! After we met with them, they took us to talk to their professor, who turned out to be the woman in charge of all of the volunteer offices at the University! She reports directly to the Rector (president) of the university, and she is awesome!!! When we told her we would need transportation, she said it would be no problem at all! It was crazy!!! That was always our biggest concern, and she just blew it off like it was nothing and asked us what else we would need! She has been extremely helpful, and is setting an appointment for us to present ourselves to the Rector of the university this week! With her help, she said we could recruit a ton more students and make it into a formal program! I am so excited that we ran into her!

Now the biggest problem is sustainability. Everytime we talk to people here, they ask how long our program is going to last, and we try to explain that it isn´t supposed to end, and they don´t understand. They want us to tell them its going to happen for six months or something, and they don´t completely understand what we are trying to do, because its just not done here. We are going to have to work really hard to get a fully established program going, so that they can reorganize themselves each year. Right now we are not sure that will be a possibility, and we might have to have next year´s HELP volunteers help them to reorganize it next year, which isn´t ideal, but it is a start. If we helped them a couple years, hopefully they would catch on and be able to run it themselves. I hope we will help them be self sufficient with this program, but this is the problem we are currently facing. We will know more once we speak with the Rector on Tuesday.

Another cool thing that I learned from the university students when I talked to them on Thursday was that they are trying to start a Women in Engineering (WE) chapter here! We work with a lot of electrical engineering majors- they were just our first contacts here at the university- and they were telling me about it. I told them I would love to be involved and help them organize things with the club if they would like. Isn´t that awesome that things like this span different countries and all walks of life?? I love connections like that. Like how Courtney and I share embarrassing moments even oceans and countries apart. Courtney, who is in Spain, told me that while running one morning she tripped over a rock and fell flat on the ground and was extremely embarrassed. Haha literally the day before I read that story from her, I had been running in the morning and had tripped over a rock and fell face first in the dust! Haha I was completely mortified as the local boy Jaylynn and I were running with helped me up, and we just kept running! Then, on Saturday, we were invited to play volleyball with the people of Villa Chulucanas- the town without water. We went there, and they tied up a net between a couple houses on the street, drew lines with water and chalk on the ground, appointed a referee person, and played! The president of the village, as well as all the other officials and the women of the community joined in, and it was fantastic! It amazes me how we, as people in different countries and from different cultures, can share such familiar and similar life experiences all over the world. This is probably my favorite part of Peru- experiencing the different culture and exploring new places and ideas, and yet basking in the similarities and revelling in the facets of life that don´t change no matter where you live. Its a wonderful combination.

Other fun facts about Peru:

-They don´t have real napkins here. They use these weird one-ply, tiny pices of tissue paper that slightly resemble napkins. They wrap up all of the tops of their utensils in them, and call it good! So we have to be careful to never spill anything or make too much of a mess, because they reallý don´t do much!

-Peru is very.....fragrant. Well, there are many smells in Peru, but mostly only one of them is good, and that´s the food! The food here smells and tastes delicious. Now, if you smell something awful, there are a couple options:
     1. Poop- animals and humans just go anywhere, so sometimes you get a nice whiff of that.
     2. Garbage- garbage is just sitting around rotting everywhere!
     3. Burning garbage- if garbage ISN´T just sitting there, its because it is being burned. It ALMOST smells good, like a campfire, but then there is this weird rancid smell that ruins it. Sometimes its hard to breathe. Its not good for the environment to burn garbage, but I don´t think most people recognize that here.
     4. Men with too much cologne
     5. Men WITHOUT too much cologne- people here don´t always smell that great! Haha, but to be fair, us volunteers don´t really smell that great anymore either...
     6. Car exhaust- I don´t really think there are any regulations around here protecting from pollution, so people are pretty free to drive whatever they want.

I´m sure there are more smells, and I am probably forgetting a couple, but these are the main ones. :)

-I don´t know if I mentioned it already, but there was a second flood. Not as funny as the first time! But it builds character, right??

-Glenda is now dead. Her purpose in life as a turkey was to produce eggs to create more turkeys, but she ate all her eggs after she layed them, so she wasn´t fulfilling her purpose in life, so Mary Carmen killed her. I must say, Glenda was a little tough, but over all she tasted quite nice.


Well, in closing, I would just like to say that while I doubt I am making a huge difference in the lives of people here in Peru, Peru is making a difference in mine. I hope that as I continue to serve others, I can improve myself and find ways to apply everything I learn here to my life back in the states.

Have a great week everyone!! (or two, since I haven´t been that consistant at blogging. Sorry!)

Melanie