Baked 2 pecan pies and 2 apple pies.
Wednesday, 1 day to Thanksgiving
Made some creamed corn during my first break between classes. Got home from class at 9. Boiled a buttload of sweet potatoes, put them in a casserole and put the glaze on them. Washed and trimmed the green beans and boiled them. Made the cream of mushroom soup (it only comes in powdered form here) and mixed it with the beans. Went to sleep at 2 a.m.
Thursday, Thanksgiving
Up at 7:30. Put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes and baked them. Put the onions on the green beans and baked them. Reheated the creamed corn.
Maria Elena picked me up at 9ish and we headed to the school. I was so excited to have our Thanksgiving party with the kids! When we got there, Nichole's room had cleared out all the desks and set up a table at the front of the room. They had decorated the board with Thanksgiving stuff, and we put an orange table cloth on and started setting out the dishes. Nichole had made a 20 lb turkey, stuffing, and gravy, and some parents had brought mashed potatoes. Some of the other teachers at the school came in to learn about Thanksgiving, too.
We brought my kids in the room, and Nichole commenced by telling them the story of the first Thanksgiving. Then I explained to them how a typical family celebrates Thanksgiving in the states (all I really had to say was that you cook half the morning, and then eat and sleep the rest of the day). I also explained to them what foods we would be trying. Then they asked me to say a prayer in English. I was completely drawing a blank when I was trying to remember how the food prayer goes ( I remember it now: Bless us oh lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ, our lord, Amen.) However, that was not coming to me at the time, so I considered doing Dad's standard Thanksgiving prayer: "Good food, good meat, good god, let's eat." No one would understand it anyways, so why not? However I decided against it, and just made some stuff up instead.
And then, we ate. We were worried the food wasn't going to be enough for 60 kids and 5 teachers, so we decided to make them hand us their plates and we served them about a bite of everything. However, it ended up being the modern day fish and bread miracle, because everyone was able to get seconds if they wanted, and everyone left full. The kids loved the turkey and pie, but weren't huge fans of the creamed corn. All in all, it was a hit. They had a lot of fun, and I think the teachers had a good time, too.
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| With Profesora Delia and the kids |
Afterwards, they presented us with going away gifts (it was Nichole's last day, and I only have about 4 days left there).
We got a cute little ceramic Andean Nativity scene, and a giant envelope filled with letters from each child. They were so cute! They had various spellings of my name: Yeimi, Jeimi, Yemy, Jaime, none of which were Jamie. And they told me they would miss me and said thanks for teaching them English. One of them even said "I hope you liked us even though we behaved so bad for you sometimes." :)
Afterwards, I relaxed at home in my food coma until it was time to eat again. You can take the girl out of America, but you can't take the America out of the girl. A few of us went to our friend Jimmy's house. He's American and studies here at the UP, but his American parents also live here, so they were having a Thanksgiving dinner and said he could invite his friends. It was deliiiicious. Stuffed again.
After that we went to Hensley's for the owner's bday party, then I called it a night around 1.
Friday
I didn't go to the school on Friday, because we had an ELAP activity. Maria Elena took us out to a "pueblo joven" called 3 de Octubre. A pueblo joven is an area that has been "invaded" as they say here. Here's what our prof told us about them in my anthro class. Basically, immigrants come in and build their house on an empty piece of land on the outskirts of town. The land is empty because it's not really suitable for habitation. It's basically just solid rock. At first they just build huts. Slowly through the years, they're able to build cement walls and put on a tin roof. Then they may be able to put in a cement floor instead of just mud. Next they might be able to build a cement roof. At that point the might build another level, again with a tin roof until they've saved up enough for a cement roof. At some point they may have the money to paint their house or put tile on the outside. Usually they all come from the same communities, and when they're building up their houses it's a collective task. As these communities grow, they come up with their own informal ways of building up the infrastructure of the community. Since the land is rock, they have to devise an above-ground water system. It's really amazing what people have accomplished in this completely informal situation, without the help of the municipality.
We took a cab out to Chorrillos (one of the districts in Lima) and took a combi to 3 de Octubre. There, we visited a school. It was a nursery and preschool, but the kids were not in school that day because it was a teacher planning day. Even though it was in a pueblo joven, the school was pretty nice. I think it's just recently been improved a lot, though. They were showing us around, and said that a lot of the tile floors had just been put in. They had used old doors that people donated to them to make tables, and for some of their own classroom doors. It was nicer than the school that I work at, at least aesthetically. I think I'm going to go visit it again next week when they're in classes as part of my thesis research.
After the school, we went to a comedor popular. It was a little dining hall funded by a governmental food program. The ladies that work there work from about 9-3 M-F, in exchange for 7 rations of food to take home to their families each day. The government provides them with rice and flour and such, and also with some money, then they cook a giant pot of rice, a giant pot of soup, a giant pot of the main meal, and a giant pot of some kind of drink (chamomile tea that day).
People come in and get soup, rice, the main dish, and a drink for S/ 1.50. This is about 55 cents. It gives families a chance to feed themselves and their kids for much cheaper than they would be able to by going to the store and cooking for the whole family. Plus, it gives the women who work there a chance to feed their families.
We helped out by cutting some potatoes, and then serving and washing dishes once the people started coming in. I kind of felt more in the way at times than anything, but it was a good experience.
Last night Nichole and Hannah stopped by, and once we made it through one of my bottles of Ica wine, we headed to the casino that's close by called New York. We sat down at the slot machines, and right before we were about to move, because there were no ladies in our area to bring us free drinks, I won! Not just like 3 soles, I won 100 soles on one spin. It was pretty awesome. That's like $35. So I was excited. And then we moved upstairs to the card game machines, were the ladies with free drinks were close at hand. It was a good night.
Today
Today was our ISA going away party. Our last hoorah before everyone heads home. Nichole is leaving tonight, the UP people are leaving next weekend, me and the other Catolica people are leaving the weekend after, and the USIL people the weekend after that.
We headed out to La Molina to the Universidad Agraria de La Molina. Why? Because they have a paintball field!
We got into 2 teams, and headed out. It was my first time playing paintball so I was pretty excited. I was not aware that there were teams involved, or the conquering of flags, or strategies. I just thought you shoot people and get shot for the fun of it. But apparently I was wrong. Our team won the first battle but lost the 3 subsequent ones.
I got shot 3 times and only shot someone once. I have a couple good welts on my hip and my side. Those suckers hurt. But it was a lot of fun. After the battle, we had our potluck dinner. Raquel and I brought deviled eggs, and they were grilling burgers and hot dogs. They also brought a turkey, so it was kind of a Thanksgiving dinner/ BBQ.
After that we had the awards ceremony. They gave out prizes for stuff that we had voted on, like who spoke the most Spanish, who had the most Peruvian friends, who tried the most food, who travelled the most, etc. But they forgot to bring the certificates that said what the awards were for. Michelle had most of them on her blackberry, but at the end she gave me one of the gift bags and told me that I won something but she couldn't remember what. I'm guessing it was for eating or traveling. I do both of those pretty well. And I have proof of the former hanging over the sides of my now too-tight jeans.
It was nice seeing everyone again before we all go home, but it also sucked because it was probably the last time I'll ever see a lot of those people again, and I hate saying goodbyes!
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