Rainy Season

I live in the mountains but one day a crab was just outside of my room in site. The doctors thought I was lying because there shouldn't be crabs in the mountains...

Where I live in Peru (The coastal mountains) there is this thing which is known as Rainy Season. What this means is that it rains...essentially all day. It only started a ten days or so ago, but the pattern which I have noticed is that it rains from about 1 or 2 in the afternoon until about 7 in the morning this gives me about 6 or 7 hours where it only drizzles. Because when I say it rains, what I mean to say is that it is downpore like I've never seen before. I can't leave my house, the streets turn to mud and because this is obviously the same for everyone in my site many of the people have peaced out and won't come back until the school year starts.

So, basically the month of December has been spent playing card games with a few kids who are still in town, reading lots of books and wishing for April or May. They'll come soon enough!

This past weekend, the volunteers put on a camp called ALMA (Actividades Liderazgo para Mujeres Adolescentes - Leadership Activities for Adolescent Women). It was a lot of fun and it was a great weekend. 14 volunteers helped with the weekend and most brought girls from their site so that there were 22 girls. I helped with the background stuff for this camp setting up the room, buying supplies and helping with the camp as best I can. We are going to do a similar camp for guys hopefully in a few months.

We think that some of the food gave us food poisoning. Nearly all of the volunteers were sick and I was sick all last night and this morning. I slept a lot and think it has passed.

I'm not looking forward to going back to site. This isn't because I don't like my site but the rains extend the amount of time it takes to get there. Normally the bus ride is 3 hours. My friend who lives about 15-20 minutes further away from me (without the rain) rode on the bus for 8 hours to get down into the city the other day...that just doesn't seem that fun but I'll be making the trek soon enough!

Life is good, Piura is hot and I'm loving my Peace Corps life still. I'm excited because next month there is a huge Mardi Gras celebrating in Cajamarca (one of the departments/capitals) and it'll be nice to see everyone (or a lot of people).

Pictures aren't loading so well...again