Farming, parties, and guinea pigs oh my

la piscigranja
beautiful

el cuyi...guinea pig...mmm
it was actually delicious haha
presenting traditional dance of la libertad
callahuanca is pretty
a waterfall

in the car on the way to callahuanca
party in tres de octubre
drinking chiramoya...good fruit
in callahuanca
cool stone

Two pretty cool things happened this weekend. Actually three pretty cool things. First, we went to “La Agraria” on Saturday morning. La agraria is a agriculture university more or less. It’s incredibly competitive to get into. Anyways, at la agraria we learned about types of fruits we might encounter out at site. There are a ton of fruits here in Peru and lots of them you cannot find in the US. It’s really awesome. Then, we learned how to create soil which is suitable to plant a seed into. Basically we combined musco, which I think was mossy soil, with some sand and water. After we made the soil, we put the soil in those plastic things with little gaps for plants to grow then seeded the soil. We learned how to seed out in the field too (like those big corn fields and stuff). We planted zucchini anddddd something else I forget. However, I felt really accomplished after the session was done.

After that I came back and bought some new soccer shoes for playing on the concrete. They’re a Peruvian brand which is pretty cool. Then that night we went to a party in our town. It was just out on the middle of the street. They had set up a stage and these huge towers made out of bamboo sticks. A band played for most of the night. The other volunteers and I were all in attendance. The dancing was rather interesting. We pretty much frolicked in a circle holding hands more or less. I guess that’s a good description of it. Pretty much everyone was drunk. Oh and when you drink here in peru, if you buy a bottle of beer you have to share it with everyone else in the group. Basically, one person buys a bottle and pours a little in a plastic cup to drink. He’ll drink it then pour out the backwash and hand it to the next person. This continues until the beer is done. It’s a really inefficient way of drinking but that’s how it goes here. Also, a lot different than we are used to. Around 1AM or so they told us they were going to light the towers on fire, which we took to mean like the whole thing. However, the towers were lined with fireworks. It was pretty crazy. These things were probably 25 to 30 feet high and had tons of fireworks on them. Something that definitely would be prohibited in the US. It was pretty cool though.

Today, I ate guinea pig. It was really delicious once you got past the fact that you could see its little feet and its head haha. Guinea pig is actually one of the most nutritious meats around apparently. My mom fried it this time. We still have four more babies which I guess we are finishing before I leave. Wooohoooo.