Sheep prizes, ancianos, and wally

Hello all! A month in site has proved its ups and downs, magical experiences and dull-lonely moments...all the extremes wrapped up in one big lovely package, including temperature, which is what all my conversations end up consisting of, but what´s all that different in the states? So I´ll add to the repetitiveness: it is below freezing at night, as my water bottles outside are frozen in the morning and then gets warm during the day, depending on the wind, it can stay chilly or get fairly warm-ish. Extremes, yes. But it is also a very dry cold which I am told is better than a humid cold. But what I don´t understand is that they love to play sports and they play at night, like 8-9-10 o´clock. It is well into the 30s by that time, and at 12,000ft my lungs and nose and hands and toes don´t appreciate it.

I just finished the second tournament of my Huari-life so far--Women´s basketball that I played on the team of the teachers of the school I´m teaching at, and they take their sports VERY seriously. So, it´s a good thing we won the tournament (yay!) which consisted of a prize of a live sheep. Yes, they dragged an unwilling sheep to the court and it sat there as we played with a sign on it that said first prize. After the game, we paraded it around the court and back to another teacher´s patio. I´ve heard there is a bbq scheduled next week, so yay I guess.

We played at a cancha (court) that is tucked away at the edge of town, so everyone (most of the town) wanders in eventually either walking or riding their bikes (only one or two cars will show up), sometimes the games start an hour-hour and a half after the scheduled time. After leaving the main street, it is a short moon-lit walk under the million stars by the soccer field. The first night, I was startled at the darkness and afraid of tripping, but now I appreciate the beauty of the darkness, after all I hate street-lights. The court lights are bright and sometimes turn off, making us wait 10 minutes for them to warm-up and turn on again, and we have to put in a couple of B´s every game to pay for the lights. Everyone is bundled up and wanders in and out. Volleyball rules were strict and rigid, while the basketball games...a little rough I´ll say. Even all the ladies tell me that most of the plays would be fouls in the states, but here they just let it go, and pull and grab and foul and play strong. So, needless to say, since I quit basketball in 9th grade because I wasn´t a strong enough player, they all tell me ¨tienes que ser fuerte¨ (you have to be strong), because I´m probably the tallest player out there, but if I grab a rebound they always just grab it from me. I have to work on my tip-shots, just like Dad taught me...so next year. =) But, the free-throws went well for me.

Ok, so other than that. I am still teaching 7th and 8th graders ¨environment¨ classes for 40 minutes (4 classes total)...I don´t remember if I said that before...every Monday and Tuesday afternoon, and still ´doing´ my diagnostico, which involves doing what I want to around the community to get to know people and organizations and ways of life. Last week, my favorite activity was visiting the ´casa de ancianos´ which is the old people´s home. No-one lives there, but they meet once a week for a meeting and to receive bread and milk. I arrived and knew I was getting close when I saw people walking along the dirt road with make-shift walkers and hunched over. Everyone was sitting on the front-porch, chatting, and I introduced myself to the half-toothless, half-blind, half-deaf group of sweet, wrinkled, and aged huareños. They were adorable. I told them what I was doing and tried some of my Quechua out on them, they loved that. My favorite story was when one lady showed up and her friend looked at her and said, ¨so and so told me you died on Monday!¨ They laughed for about 20 minutes about this, and they lady who ´had died´ said that this had happened to her twice that week, so I guess she had come back from the dead twice that week. Her eyes sparkled as she laughed, as if she really had come back from the dead, twice.

This weekend has been great in Oruro, the time spent cooking and hanging-out is needed to get yourself through some of the tough-times during the week. Food is one of the top conversations among PCVs, so we try to cook as much as possible, especially when we are together on the weekends...including some delish roasted red pepper tomato soup with grilled cheese and some cheesy omelets with fresh squeezed orange juice. Yum. The hostel we have stayed at lets us use the kitchen...and actually has real beds (no lamb wool mattresses) and down comforters (wow, SO nice). Also here in Oruro (and kinda all across Boliv, although I´m not sure) Wally-ball is huge. Volleyball in an indoor racketball room, usually the walls are stained with dirt and the floor is less than polished hardwood, and yesterday it was leaking water from the roof, but it is a good time. We usually play everytime a lot of people are in town, I´m getting better, but not professional yet.

Also, we found an Eco-park friday which was half-abandoned, but still fun. There was a section of about 20 pine trees, and the wind blowing through the branches was a foreign sound, I stood under the shade and listened to the beautiful breeze. I´ve never appreciated the simple presence of trees so much. The tire swings and concrete wall of a slide, and teeter-totters were also nice, but not as refreshing as the sound of wind through the trees.


Oh, something I´m practicing in site is peeling veggies and fruits and mincing garlic in my hand...getting small cuts all over my thumbs (small...no blood) and cooking with a bucket of water to wash, rinse, and cook with...as my faucet is down-stairs. It´s sometimes (and the fact that I have to wash dishes in freezing cold water) enough to make me eat out most meals. But, the banana bread, grilled cheese, and pasta meals are needed as a small break from the pensión meals.

Ok, that´s all I can think of right now...Here´s a lovely picture from the first week or two of training at our superbowl party that I´ve been searching for...thanks Jackie, I stole it from your blog. By the way, I discovered a couple more of my fellow B44 groupies´blogs, so check them out to your right. Everyone else on the list is experiencing the chaco or lowland life, so I´m sure it´s a different perspective than mine. I forgot my camera connector and my camera this weekend, so no new pics to post, sorry, there will be plenty more Huari sites to view later.