Huaraz pics

climbin
me
me
me
me
yae
yae
me
me
yae
boots
the wall
sweet pic
nice
nice
I dont remember how to spell the name of the lake but its pretty awesome....glacial lake

almost falling
huascaran
glacial lake

It's been awhile...

I have realized for the past month that I have not written anything in my blog for about 2 months which is pretty lame if I am honest with myself. Now, I really have no excuse given the fact that I have free wifi in my municipality. With that said, this is my long overdue update to my blog.
First, I guess I will talk about trips and vacations and what not. Towards the end of July I ventured up to Ancash for fiestas patrias (peru’s independence day). Where is Ancash you ask. Ancash is a department in northern Peru. The capital of the department, Huaraz is about 8 hours away from Lima by bus. Why go to Ancash you ask. Well, first off, a bunch of other volunteers from my group we’re heading there to celebrate fiestas patrias. Second, Ancash contains the Cordillera Blanca. The Cordillera Blanca contains the biggest collection of tall nevadas in Peru. It is captained by Huascaran, which is the biggest mountain in Peru. The cool thing about Ancash is that, unlike in Arequipa, most of the nevadas still have snow on top. With that said, when we were in Ancash we did ice climbing (yes with picks and those sharp shoes) on a glacier. Furthermore, we saw some cool glacial lakes and enjoyed the festivities there. Although Ancash was cool, Arequipa is still the best department in Peru.

Another celebration we attended was dia de Arequipa or more commonly known to English speakers as Arequipa Day. Every year Arequipa has a huge party for the anniversary of its creation. The party includes 4 different concerts at once on Friday night and on Saturday a huge parade which lasts all day. It was rather fun and hopefully I’ll be around for it next year.

As far as work is concerned, July and August have both been rather slow months. However, this current week has actually been rather exciting. We are starting up computer classes again in Mid-September because the municipality has received 10 new computers with internet!!! This eliminates the previous problem I had with working at the high school because people are in the municipality at night. I plan on teaching how to use the internet and how to make your own website. In addition, I would like to teach personal finance using excel but only a few are interested in that so I think I’m going to teach them individually.
Aside from this, the tourism association seems to be resurrecting itself. We’ll have to wait to see if that actually happens. The best thing that has happened recently is that I am now coaching the high school soccer team haha, which is great. We just started this week. We practice at 5AM in the morning which is horrible but not really b/c I go to bed at around 9 or 930 every night. I think it’s a great activity for the youth though. It instills a little discipline in their lives as well as serving as an activity which they can do outside of school (there aren’t any of those).

I will be heading to Lima on Saturday for training and medical checks. So, hopefully I’ll be able to update while I’m in Lima. Until then, hope all is well.