So I get a kick out of the stats related to my website.. (have i already posted about this?)... So I'll share with you some of the interesting stuff...
From the beginning, approx Sept 26, 2008 to today...
I've had 714 visits from 31 different countries to my blog (top 10 countries in order of visits is US, Peru (probably me blogging), Solvenia, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, Mexico, and India)
56% of my visits are from returning visitors :) yay! thanks for coming and reading my stuff :)
When someone has come to my website through a google search, here is some of the stranger keyword searches:
christine xxxxx (last name censored)---woah! someone came to my website after searching for you Christine... weird?!?
lice ---hah great.. glad people are finding me with that..
bush falls off cart in peru--huh???
chinitas peru
coreanita
freckles ---i would imagine that they would have had to been on the 1000000000th search page to have mine pop up..???
peruvian mancora creamy yellow salsa recipe---tasty.. too bad for the person for not finding this recipe on my blog.. hah...
peruvians are missing parties beach in peru this summer--wow very strange google search...
show me what peru looks like right now --huh?..
shrimp unfridgerated
skip peru lizette--hrm.. who's searching for me?
not sure if that's interesting to anyone else but me.. :) but thought i'd post it...
Monday, February 23, 2009
My first time in a well...
Had to jump into a well today...
There's no running water where I work.. so in order to flush the toilet, I need to go to the well and fill up a bucket... As I'm filling up the bucket, i hear a plop and my heart sinks because i know just what it was.. I dive into the well and grab the phone, but none to early, it's completely drenched from the inside and with each shake theres a rain of water...
This is the phone I use in the states... and for those who know, it's EVERYTHING... my schedule, my contacts, my alarm clock, all sorts of information that doesn't fit in my head, goes into this phone.. etc etc etc... and was quite a bit expensive at that.. Made me contemplate quite a bit about my attachment to this phone and whether that's something I need to change...
Anyway, one of my peruvian friends informed me that you can go to a phone place in the center of town and get it dried/cleaned.. Feeling quite defeated, I went for it, though I figured all the circuits were probably blown and I would need to invest in a new phone and unfortunate it was that i had spent so much on this one...
Well.. S/.20 (which is about $6) & 50 minutes later--including a nap in the store--- my phone is once again functional... yay!!
There's no running water where I work.. so in order to flush the toilet, I need to go to the well and fill up a bucket... As I'm filling up the bucket, i hear a plop and my heart sinks because i know just what it was.. I dive into the well and grab the phone, but none to early, it's completely drenched from the inside and with each shake theres a rain of water...
This is the phone I use in the states... and for those who know, it's EVERYTHING... my schedule, my contacts, my alarm clock, all sorts of information that doesn't fit in my head, goes into this phone.. etc etc etc... and was quite a bit expensive at that.. Made me contemplate quite a bit about my attachment to this phone and whether that's something I need to change...
Anyway, one of my peruvian friends informed me that you can go to a phone place in the center of town and get it dried/cleaned.. Feeling quite defeated, I went for it, though I figured all the circuits were probably blown and I would need to invest in a new phone and unfortunate it was that i had spent so much on this one...
Well.. S/.20 (which is about $6) & 50 minutes later--including a nap in the store--- my phone is once again functional... yay!!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Wishlists
So, right now the only thing on my wishlist is TOFU. I had found one place that sold tofu and now they discontinued it, I don't know why...
As for SKIP.. we have a wishlist as well....
http://skipperu.org/index.php/Wish-List/wish-list.html
SKIP would never function without the generosity and time of everyone involved.
In addition to our constant fund needs for education and related activities, we are currently seeking donations of the following items:
books for the skip library
Books in Spanish for children : dictionnaries, atlas, fairytales, school books, comics
Books in English: fairytales, dictionnary
Books for the parents and the volunteers, preferably in Spanish: psychology, health etc
paint, play dough, pens and pencils
Gardening tools,
Athletic gear: balls, shirts
Notebooks,
Caligraphy books,
Pens,
Pencils,
Paints,
Crayons,
A4 paper,
All other scholastic materials.
Childrens toothbrushes
As for SKIP.. we have a wishlist as well....
http://skipperu.org/index.php/Wish-List/wish-list.html
SKIP would never function without the generosity and time of everyone involved.
In addition to our constant fund needs for education and related activities, we are currently seeking donations of the following items:
books for the skip library
Books in Spanish for children : dictionnaries, atlas, fairytales, school books, comics
Books in English: fairytales, dictionnary
Books for the parents and the volunteers, preferably in Spanish: psychology, health etc
paint, play dough, pens and pencils
Gardening tools,
Athletic gear: balls, shirts
Notebooks,
Caligraphy books,
Pens,
Pencils,
Paints,
Crayons,
A4 paper,
All other scholastic materials.
Childrens toothbrushes
Monday, February 16, 2009
Otra vez....
Well, there was definitely good reason to invest in the industrial strength nit/lice comb... looks like i've got lice again.. it's no wonder, because i'm in the classroom all day with the kids... no one else in the house seems to be getting them but me..
so the old wive's tale is that you get them if you don't wash your hair enough.. but from studies, it's actually that lice prefer clean hair... so just so you know I am keeping myself clean!! :)
so the old wive's tale is that you get them if you don't wash your hair enough.. but from studies, it's actually that lice prefer clean hair... so just so you know I am keeping myself clean!! :)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Half way mark
Did I mention that I'm at my halfway mark for Trip 1 of my travels. I will be coming back to the states at the end of July which is in about 4.5 months.. I had decided that likely Trip 2 (other countries in S Amer and Centr Amer; --S.E.Asia?--) will be after the holidays (need to talk to Cassanna about that!!)... so i'll be home for a good 6 months before heading out again.
There's this whole thing with one-way tickets costing more than round trip tickets.. and i have spent hours and hours researching the best cost to get home.. up until today the best cost i could find was about $600... until...........
Not exactly sure how I came to do this, but I decided to check out a ticket from Lima to Miami instead of Los Angeles.. lo and behold, they are half as expensive, if not less than that... so that got me on to a search for one way tickets from miami to los angeles, which are really not to bad either... so after months of searching I have finally found a route that will take me from lima to miami (avianca) to los angeles (american airlines) ...(all will be done in one day 5:50am - 8pm) for $434 (including all taxes)!!...
I'm booking this tomorrow as I feel wiped out tonight and don't feel like dealing with it right now.. but it looks like i'll be coming home for a little over $400... yay!! And I'm setting the date for 23rd of July... (might set it for 24th of july if that's easier for someone to pick me up)
-----------update
TIckets bought... will be arriving in LAX approx 8pm on Thursday July 23rd.
There's this whole thing with one-way tickets costing more than round trip tickets.. and i have spent hours and hours researching the best cost to get home.. up until today the best cost i could find was about $600... until...........
Not exactly sure how I came to do this, but I decided to check out a ticket from Lima to Miami instead of Los Angeles.. lo and behold, they are half as expensive, if not less than that... so that got me on to a search for one way tickets from miami to los angeles, which are really not to bad either... so after months of searching I have finally found a route that will take me from lima to miami (avianca) to los angeles (american airlines) ...(all will be done in one day 5:50am - 8pm) for $434 (including all taxes)!!...
I'm booking this tomorrow as I feel wiped out tonight and don't feel like dealing with it right now.. but it looks like i'll be coming home for a little over $400... yay!! And I'm setting the date for 23rd of July... (might set it for 24th of july if that's easier for someone to pick me up)
-----------update
TIckets bought... will be arriving in LAX approx 8pm on Thursday July 23rd.
Brentt Visits!!!
It was so wonderful to have Brentt here visiting me for 3 weeks. Was counting down the days since buying the plane tickets. So I took a 9 hour bus to meet him in Lima since we were taking off by plane to Iquitos from there (Iquitos/Amazon can only be reached by boat or airplane!). While in Lima, I found a cookbook that is ONLY available in Lima.. if you try and buy it online it's only sold for like $200+ ... had been searching for it in Trujillo and it is indeed ONLY available in Lima... was still a bit of a hefty purchase for a book, but I figured it was going to be my one big gift to myself... has great reviews on amazon and is quite an amazing cookbook with explanations on all the foods unique to peru... I am definitely going to miss the food here when i get back home so I had to invest in a really good cookbook. I've already got brentt sold on the papa a la huancaina.. and he tried and really liked the aji de gallina (which of course we'll substitute the meat with some sort of tofu or something since his vegetarian hiaitus was only for his time in Peru)....
So.. we got to Iquitos.. a friend of a friend was to pick us up from the airport, but he was preoccupied with work and forgot to pick us up... which turned into an interesting ordeal because the mototaxi guys are a bit insistent and finally we allowed one to call this friend (since i ran out of minutes on my phone, which sucked as it was, since we were a bit stranded cuz i neglected to get the address of this friend since i thought he was picking us up) we weren't actually sure if he actually called my friend and hestitatingly got into the mototaxi not really sure where we were going... as we're in the mototaxi, this guy in a motorcycle comes by and they just nod at each other and the mototaxi guy starts following him... brentt and I are staring at each other like.. what did that mean? is that my friend (neglected to ask him to send me a picture so i had no idea what he looked like) how'd he know that was him with just a nod... ... anyway, end up at the guy's house and there's a frenzy to get the backpacks out into the house, which added to our strange suspicion.. I look at the guy and i'm like.. "are you xxx??" to which he says yes... anyway, it turns out it really was him, but it was an odd experience for us... to add to the oddity, so my friend had offered for us to stay at his place, so i cancelled our reservations at the hostel... he neglected to mention that his bedroom/apartment is one room... this was a bit awkward as it has been 4 months since brentt and I have seen each other and were hoping to have some level of privacy to catch up on our lives and have alone time... it was an incredibly generous offer for him to allow us to stay at his plce, but a bit awkward .... so we ended up going back to the hostel with our cancelled reservations where the lady kept going on and on about how she had reservations for us and we cancelled them and now she doesn't have them... to which we explained the situation, but she continued going on and on about it.. oh well... my friend found a hostel down the street for us, so it all worked out....
so the next day we were off to the jungle lodge... it was incredibly surreal.. just sort of amazing that a place this beautiful exists naturally..
It was the start of the rainy season so there were alot of half "flooded" trees, flooded houses (houses only used during farming and therefore flooded during rainy season?), houses on stilts... Some animals we saw were venomous/nonvenomous snakes, friendly/domesticated monkeys (who were very cute and polite), iguana, praying mantises (alot of them!!! which was cool cuz brentt and i are obsessed about them), anaconda, armadillo, tarantulas, frogs, poisonous catapillars, massively huge ants, parasitic trees, pink dolphins, lots of amazing plants, ... etc etc etc... it was surreal to turn around in the canoe to find a tarantula crawling by next to me (actually it was the ants that scared me the most)....
we were covered in head to toe in the heat, because the mosquitos are relentless... i had just about 100 bites on my hands and feet/legs... we used alot of deet, but any oportunity they could get to bite where there wasn't deet or bite where there was deet they did... we did end up taking malarone pills, you take it for 1-2 days before you enter the malaria area, then during the time you're there until 7 days after you've left. I didn't notice any side effects.
It was strange (and must have been strange to the guides at the lodge), when we arrived, there was an australian couple who were leaving.. where the guy was white and the woman was asian, then there was brentt and I, and then couple days later, another couple white/asian came (from england/japan)... there weren't alot of guests at the lodge, so this really stood out...
one of the coolest experienced was furiously canoeing for 1.5 hours in a thunder/lighteningstorm back to the lodge... our guide told us to take off any metal we were wearing as we could get electricuted.. it was quite fun though, we were all just laughing and jokes as we were having sheets of rain pouring down on us and still a long way to get back to the lodge... our guide kept telling us to take our raincoats off because the rain was healing... I spent most of the time bailing water out of the canoe, as our two guides and brentt were rowing ... though i did put some of my share of rowing to give the others a break every once in a while :)
one of our guides caught an anaconda in his fishing net the night before and showed it to us.. turns out he was going to "domesticate it" with tobacco leaves and then let it roam their home to eat rats and possibly one of their dogs??.....
on one day we ended up at a work party, where people from the people from the village get together and have a little party with lunch before they help clear a garden for a neighbor. They gave us a taste of some armadillo that they were just finished cooking...it was like rubbery chicken.
on our last day in iquitos we went to the butterfly farm.. there was a tapir there; did you know if you rub a tapir, it loves it so much it'll roll around on the floor?
At all times there are beautiful sounds all around you.. tried to capture the sounds one night:
It was incredibly loud at night, but soothing at the same time..
On the way back to Trujillo, we took a 3 day boat ride to yurimaguas... 3 days of this.... life is tough eh??
We needed to buy hammocks for the boat ride..
Brentt ended up getting sick in Yurimaguas to Tarapoto, so it was good that we spent one night in Tarapoto before heading to Trujillo.
The trip to Iquitos with the jungle tour, flight from lima, boat/bus ride back, and everything came out to just about $550 for two people more or less... (if you're curious how much it would cost to go to the amazon jungle... )
Back in trujillo, brought brentt around to see Chan Chan, the Huacas del Sol y de la luna, to Huanchaco for surfing (which brentt turns out to be a pro!! and the only skills i was able to show brentt was surfing on my knees and falling), went out dancing with my housemates (
), cooked some yummy japanese curry (which was not quite japanese curry, but got rave reviews anyway), trip to hermalinda, the movies, porvenir (where i work), and the center of town... had a very full awesome time in trujillo.... even saw a "fake Bones" ..
one story to end off with... we came to this one restaurant to eat and were deciding on a dessert... he was set on one but I was a bit insistent on him trying "tres leches" which has become one of my favorites here... so after a good long discussion deciding which one to choose, we got the 3 leches, which it turns out he wasn't so impressed... so we came back the next day to try out his choice... but then we we had another long decision session (keep in mind too, that brentt and I are probably the two most indecisive people in the world)... we finally decided that since we had come back to get this one dessert, we're going to choose that one... so we ordered it to go since it was brentt's last day and we were in a bit of a rush to catch the bus back to lima... we stopped off at this one store on the way home to pick up some cookies for brentt to take back... got home, now ready to eat the cake we had been waiting 2 days to try... it's gone.. likely at the one store we stopped at, we never got to try it...
back at the airport in Lima, we lost an hour of time together because when we checked in, they told brentt he had to get to the gate 2 hours before the plane leaves... that sucked, but his leaving was going to suck anyway :P
MISS YOU!!!!
More amazon videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/djelated
More of brentt's visit pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frunkus/sets/72157613801296113/
So.. we got to Iquitos.. a friend of a friend was to pick us up from the airport, but he was preoccupied with work and forgot to pick us up... which turned into an interesting ordeal because the mototaxi guys are a bit insistent and finally we allowed one to call this friend (since i ran out of minutes on my phone, which sucked as it was, since we were a bit stranded cuz i neglected to get the address of this friend since i thought he was picking us up) we weren't actually sure if he actually called my friend and hestitatingly got into the mototaxi not really sure where we were going... as we're in the mototaxi, this guy in a motorcycle comes by and they just nod at each other and the mototaxi guy starts following him... brentt and I are staring at each other like.. what did that mean? is that my friend (neglected to ask him to send me a picture so i had no idea what he looked like) how'd he know that was him with just a nod... ... anyway, end up at the guy's house and there's a frenzy to get the backpacks out into the house, which added to our strange suspicion.. I look at the guy and i'm like.. "are you xxx??" to which he says yes... anyway, it turns out it really was him, but it was an odd experience for us... to add to the oddity, so my friend had offered for us to stay at his place, so i cancelled our reservations at the hostel... he neglected to mention that his bedroom/apartment is one room... this was a bit awkward as it has been 4 months since brentt and I have seen each other and were hoping to have some level of privacy to catch up on our lives and have alone time... it was an incredibly generous offer for him to allow us to stay at his plce, but a bit awkward .... so we ended up going back to the hostel with our cancelled reservations where the lady kept going on and on about how she had reservations for us and we cancelled them and now she doesn't have them... to which we explained the situation, but she continued going on and on about it.. oh well... my friend found a hostel down the street for us, so it all worked out....
so the next day we were off to the jungle lodge... it was incredibly surreal.. just sort of amazing that a place this beautiful exists naturally..
It was the start of the rainy season so there were alot of half "flooded" trees, flooded houses (houses only used during farming and therefore flooded during rainy season?), houses on stilts... Some animals we saw were venomous/nonvenomous snakes, friendly/domesticated monkeys (who were very cute and polite), iguana, praying mantises (alot of them!!! which was cool cuz brentt and i are obsessed about them), anaconda, armadillo, tarantulas, frogs, poisonous catapillars, massively huge ants, parasitic trees, pink dolphins, lots of amazing plants, ... etc etc etc... it was surreal to turn around in the canoe to find a tarantula crawling by next to me (actually it was the ants that scared me the most)....
we were covered in head to toe in the heat, because the mosquitos are relentless... i had just about 100 bites on my hands and feet/legs... we used alot of deet, but any oportunity they could get to bite where there wasn't deet or bite where there was deet they did... we did end up taking malarone pills, you take it for 1-2 days before you enter the malaria area, then during the time you're there until 7 days after you've left. I didn't notice any side effects.
It was strange (and must have been strange to the guides at the lodge), when we arrived, there was an australian couple who were leaving.. where the guy was white and the woman was asian, then there was brentt and I, and then couple days later, another couple white/asian came (from england/japan)... there weren't alot of guests at the lodge, so this really stood out...
one of the coolest experienced was furiously canoeing for 1.5 hours in a thunder/lighteningstorm back to the lodge... our guide told us to take off any metal we were wearing as we could get electricuted.. it was quite fun though, we were all just laughing and jokes as we were having sheets of rain pouring down on us and still a long way to get back to the lodge... our guide kept telling us to take our raincoats off because the rain was healing... I spent most of the time bailing water out of the canoe, as our two guides and brentt were rowing ... though i did put some of my share of rowing to give the others a break every once in a while :)
one of our guides caught an anaconda in his fishing net the night before and showed it to us.. turns out he was going to "domesticate it" with tobacco leaves and then let it roam their home to eat rats and possibly one of their dogs??.....
on one day we ended up at a work party, where people from the people from the village get together and have a little party with lunch before they help clear a garden for a neighbor. They gave us a taste of some armadillo that they were just finished cooking...it was like rubbery chicken.
on our last day in iquitos we went to the butterfly farm.. there was a tapir there; did you know if you rub a tapir, it loves it so much it'll roll around on the floor?
At all times there are beautiful sounds all around you.. tried to capture the sounds one night:
It was incredibly loud at night, but soothing at the same time..
On the way back to Trujillo, we took a 3 day boat ride to yurimaguas... 3 days of this.... life is tough eh??
We needed to buy hammocks for the boat ride..
Brentt ended up getting sick in Yurimaguas to Tarapoto, so it was good that we spent one night in Tarapoto before heading to Trujillo.
The trip to Iquitos with the jungle tour, flight from lima, boat/bus ride back, and everything came out to just about $550 for two people more or less... (if you're curious how much it would cost to go to the amazon jungle... )
Back in trujillo, brought brentt around to see Chan Chan, the Huacas del Sol y de la luna, to Huanchaco for surfing (which brentt turns out to be a pro!! and the only skills i was able to show brentt was surfing on my knees and falling), went out dancing with my housemates (
), cooked some yummy japanese curry (which was not quite japanese curry, but got rave reviews anyway), trip to hermalinda, the movies, porvenir (where i work), and the center of town... had a very full awesome time in trujillo.... even saw a "fake Bones" ..
one story to end off with... we came to this one restaurant to eat and were deciding on a dessert... he was set on one but I was a bit insistent on him trying "tres leches" which has become one of my favorites here... so after a good long discussion deciding which one to choose, we got the 3 leches, which it turns out he wasn't so impressed... so we came back the next day to try out his choice... but then we we had another long decision session (keep in mind too, that brentt and I are probably the two most indecisive people in the world)... we finally decided that since we had come back to get this one dessert, we're going to choose that one... so we ordered it to go since it was brentt's last day and we were in a bit of a rush to catch the bus back to lima... we stopped off at this one store on the way home to pick up some cookies for brentt to take back... got home, now ready to eat the cake we had been waiting 2 days to try... it's gone.. likely at the one store we stopped at, we never got to try it...
back at the airport in Lima, we lost an hour of time together because when we checked in, they told brentt he had to get to the gate 2 hours before the plane leaves... that sucked, but his leaving was going to suck anyway :P
MISS YOU!!!!More amazon videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/djelated
More of brentt's visit pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frunkus/sets/72157613801296113/
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Picture update and summer school.
Posted some pictures from Christmas up to Brentt's visit (which will be in it's own album)...
The few pictures of Mancora that I got... including this beautiful sunset:
Some fotos of summer camp:
The makings of a poi workshop at our summer camp:
Before
After
And the kids:
For summer camp we had these awesome attendance boards.. instead of doing attendance, we had the kids put their name on the board:
We had 4 classes, so the other boards were butterflies/sky, apples/tree, and worms/earth...
Coordinating a summer camp is amazingly difficult, especially when yo'ure not a teacher nor have ever done anything like this before... fortunately I had the help of quite a few people--pretty much had someone as a co-coordinator majority of the time :) the camp was monday through friday, morning and afternoon for the primary school kids (elementary school).. more academic stuff in the mornings and fun workshops in the afternoon (such as cine club, poi, bracelet making, etc etc)... each week had a theme (ecology, animals, food, peru, the world, etc etc...) and its 7 weeks long... of our 400 primary age kids in SKIP, 90 signed up.. and about 70 show up... I have never worked so hard in my life!!! the camp required quite a bit of creativity considering the little resources we have and lack of actual teachers. but we managed and it was quite great!!
Rest of the fotos in this album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frunkus/sets/72157613795896761/
The few pictures of Mancora that I got... including this beautiful sunset:
Some fotos of summer camp:
The makings of a poi workshop at our summer camp:
Before
After
And the kids:
For summer camp we had these awesome attendance boards.. instead of doing attendance, we had the kids put their name on the board:
We had 4 classes, so the other boards were butterflies/sky, apples/tree, and worms/earth...
Coordinating a summer camp is amazingly difficult, especially when yo'ure not a teacher nor have ever done anything like this before... fortunately I had the help of quite a few people--pretty much had someone as a co-coordinator majority of the time :) the camp was monday through friday, morning and afternoon for the primary school kids (elementary school).. more academic stuff in the mornings and fun workshops in the afternoon (such as cine club, poi, bracelet making, etc etc)... each week had a theme (ecology, animals, food, peru, the world, etc etc...) and its 7 weeks long... of our 400 primary age kids in SKIP, 90 signed up.. and about 70 show up... I have never worked so hard in my life!!! the camp required quite a bit of creativity considering the little resources we have and lack of actual teachers. but we managed and it was quite great!!
Rest of the fotos in this album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frunkus/sets/72157613795896761/
Still alive
Haven't written anything in quite a while... had a really nice 3 weeks with Brentt. I'll write more later and post picture. It's been busy with summer camp and there hasn't been much time to breath (other than the 3 weeks with brentt).
Happy Valentine's day to everyone.
In Peru, it's more focused on a celebration of friendships and everyone sends each other text messages, phone calls, or emails to wish them "feliz dia de amistad" or something like that...
Happy Valentine's day to everyone.
In Peru, it's more focused on a celebration of friendships and everyone sends each other text messages, phone calls, or emails to wish them "feliz dia de amistad" or something like that...
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