sup bizzos!

.Hola queridas! This is my first blog post- I hope you all find it to your liking. Well, I feel like since this is a blog, on the world wide web, where everyone can read it- I need to keep this moderately politically correct. Is that true? There’s some stuff I won’t write about in here because I write in my other blog and I don’t want you all to have to read stuff twice! Pfeff, your post was great- I laughed, par usual. I too, started my diet yesterday. No more chicken and French fry sandwiches or alfajores. It’s so much harder because I live so close to the city that I am always in there and the food is so good! There’s this little old lady that makes cheese empanadas on the street in the afternoon and I just sit on a little plastic chair and talk to here while I consume my trans fat-ridden fried dough. BUT THEY’RE SO GOOD.

Right now, I find myself at odds with PC as a result of the administrative termination of my friend and site-mate, Steve. He was kicked out a week ago after “the man” found out he had taken a little vacation under the radar in Trujillo to go to a yearly festival. I am now alone in my district, with twice as much work and well, it should be interesting. I’ll keep you all updated. But not all is sad and lost! Another volunteer, Caleb, left and went home back in January (there were only 7 of us to start with here) but now…one of my best friends is switching sites and replacing him here! Cowabunga! She’s coming today and we’re all psyched to add another volunteer to our Tumbes gang. How is everyone doing?!? Julie and Col, your apt. looks great. I’d say it’s a tad more modern than where I am living but it looks awesome! I built a castle of sand around my door to my room to block out the rains from coming in (not that it would really damage anything- I just would have more bugs than usual). How about that for using my resources, eh?

Life here in Tumbes continues as usual. I have started working with my health promotors in site to get our butts moving on a “viviendas y familias saludables project” in my site so we can start doing health promotion with high-risk families. I’m really excited about it. Some health promoters are really cool- they come to my yoga class and we sing karaoke. Others- well, they’re older and I’m not sure how much they like taking cues from a 22-year old American. But they better get used to it I say, I’m not going anywhere! After Steve left (against his will) I kind of freaked out at the thought if I had to get sent home all of a sudden. I for the most part, really like it here and feel like I’ve set down some roots. Which means… if any of you chiquitas wanna see this tan, sun-kissed face in the next two years, start putting those pennies in the “Peru fund.” :)

The other day I ran into a volunteer who had just finished their two year service and was traveling. She, another volunteer and her Ecuadorian boyfriend had all decided to go on a South-American road trip. This included them buying a car and hatching on the back, an ice cream machine. When I saw her, they had been driving through all of Ecuador and had entered northern Peru with the plans of continuing all the way down the country and into Bolivia, selling ice cream along the way. Brilliant, right? I found it quite amusing and she said they had found monetary success with their portable fro-yo machine! Came you imagine if we all did that? It’d be like our very own UDF. All we would need was some good coffee.

Speaking of good coffee, Peru has none. It’s amazing that for as close as we are to Colombia (it borders us on the north-eastern side), we have maybe the worst coffee EVER. It’s a travesty. I scoop instant coffee form a jar into a cup of hot water and poof, it’s watered-down coffee-ish tasting water. Mmmm. So, we have our parents send us coffee grinds from the US, that have been exported to them by Colombia!!! Globilization at its finest.

Last night I had a dream we were back at Miami again, and the only thing I remembered was eating LaBo. It was glodrious. Dreds was working, we all ordered our usual and I swear I could taste the basil mayo on my Dinah. Ahhh… then I woke up. Do any of you suffer from this?

To accomadate my intense cravings for American food, yesterday my friend Alyse and I went over to our friend Ian’s house (he’s form the Chi mags!) and made pancakes!!! They were AWESOME. They don’t sell syrup here so we ate them with honey and jam which is actually really good! We (in reality Ian’s host mom) squeezed orange’s from their backyard and we had real orange juice too! The whole experience was delectable.

So there you have it, my first entry into the “Misadventures of SAB.” I miss you guys every single day. It may not help that I look at the ibook that you made me mags, but yesterday I came home and was watching movies I had taken of us on my camera. These included a 3 minute video form “last girls standing”, a 5 minute video of the night we all sat of Pfeff and Latta’s porch at the end of the year while Latta wore those stupid glasses without lenses and I had a sling on my arm, and videos of Mags, Col, and I walking around the tunnel in between Skeinkeller’s and Cirlce Bar on our last night. They are presh. I think I told you Pfeff already, but I was having a bad day the other day and was super frustrated with Peruvians. So, I opened up one of the cards you all sent me that said “Open me when you’re sad/frustrated/or angry.” So I did. It was a picture of a cat doing yoga that said inside “I meditate, I do yoga, I chant, and I still want to smack someone.” I laughed and felt a lot better. So whoever’s idea that was… it was a good one. There are still some that I haven’t opened yet, but when I do, I’ll let you know!

Okay now I have to go into Tumbes and run some last minute errands before I go down into Piura city tomorrow. Mags…this means I will have videochat (hint hint), slash maybe I can put some pictures on here! Okay love you all! LYLAS BALM.

Linds.