Photo of the Day 4.21

April 21, 2012

No, these men are not waiting in line for Chinese food. Somewhere there is a very important and/or riveting fútbol  game going on and the only tv around seems to be on Calle Asemblea. It must be a big-screen tv.

 

Frog-o-Matic

At the risk of turning this blog into an archive of all the weird things I’ve eaten, I urge you to please follow this youtube link to the see the four-minute video of a lady making “jugo de rana” or, Frog Smoothies, with an actual live frog blended into the drink. And yes, we drank it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T41hFBOrn2M&feature=youtu.be

I know what you’re probably thinking: Should someone who has clearly demonstrated that they have a sensitive stomach really be drinking a blend of raw and boiled frog parts? But let me tell you, peer pressure can be a damned dangerous thing. (Taryn and our friend Álvaro had tried it before and felt just fine) Also they claim that the jugo de rana has all kinds of curative and restorative powers. Since I seem to be ailing from several different things right now, I figured it couldn’t hurt, right?

Taryn managed to get the recipe from the muchacha incase any of you folks want to try this at home:

• Two ladles caldo de rana which is frog broth, boiled from the skin and intestines and other parts of the frog not blended into the drink
• One Huevo de codorniz – quail egg, raw with shell apparently
• Miel – honey
• Several scoops of pollen, alfalfa and polvo de maca which is some kind of fruit in powdered form
• Kiwicha – we have no idea what this is
• One small frog, skinned with legs removed
• Blend on high until foamy. And drink it very quickly,  like a shot. Don’t try to sip it like a cappuccino, you’ll regret that.

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Ready to take the plunge:

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Not smiling so much anymore…

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Empty cup!

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What does a frog smoothie taste like you ask? Well to be honest it was very sweet, most likely because of the honey. It was very warm, almost hot, since the caldo (broth) was simmering on the stove. It also had a rather grainy consistency which I attribute to the chunky pollen, but it could also have been from the pureed frog skeleton or egg shells I suppose.

Creep-out factor: astronomically high.

Final verdict: Eh, what the hell. Why not try something totally wack and outside of your comfort zone. You’re only in Peru once. And I don’t feel sick yet…

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Buen Provecho todos

-Sarita

Dia del Niño Peruano

Today was El Dia de Niño here in Peru, National Kids Day. They celebrated this in Honduras as well, and it always confused me because I was never really sure what the point of a holiday celebrating children was, but I guess any reason to have a parade I guess. The president of Peru offered this message which basically says that children are our future and that every child has the right to be healthy and have an education and live free from exploitation.

{The irony of it all is no one  seemed to notice that there were in fact very young kids walking the streets throughout all the festivities selling trays of candy and popcorn, most likely helping to support their impoverished families. Which to me seems very opposite of the overall message of the day but whatever…}

Anyway, here in Ayacucho they orchestrated a modest parade through town to celebrate Dia del Niño which culminates in the Plaza de Armas (central park) with activities, dancing, a DJ and speeches.

So volunteers from the Casa Hogar arranged for a few of our “special” kids to walk in the parade carrying signs that made statements about the rights of children with disabilities. I thought this was very fitting considering the social stigma  surrounding physical and mental handicaps in Hispanic countries. But don’t worry, it wasn’t too political. It was mostly just fun and extremely exhausting. For us, the volunteer-to-child ratio was about 1:1 considering that some of the kids can’t walk or see. We had about 10 kids participate and it required no less than 10 or 12 volunteers to make it through the parade. Several of the guys ended up carrying some kids on their shoulders for the entirety of the parade through town. Now that’s dedication.

Groups marching in the parade

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Guilherme (holding the signs) coordinated everything on the part of the Casa. Which was a significant amount of work given the overall flakiness and level of organization of Peruvians.

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Discrimination is the first impediment to disability

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Kids with disabilities have the right to be included
Kids with disabilities don’t wait for a cure, they wait to be understood
The worst disability is to not understand that we are the same.

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Taryn and 12-year-old Emmerson who is blind

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Once we got to the Plaza, someone had the brilliant idea of having all the kids paint their handprint on a big banner. But brought nothing for them to clean the paint off with, so there were one hundred children running around getting paint on everything and everyone...

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Trying to get some of the Casa Kids to dance with the DJ

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More dancers

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Christofer, Taryn and I at the end of the parade

Paz everyone!

-Sarita

Worst weekend ever.

I know I said I would give a full report on Semana Santa/Easter week but to be honest it was one of the worst weekends of my life so I think I’ll just gloss over it… My bag was stolen on Friday night (with my DSLR camera and all of my Semana Santa pictures, along with my wallet and glasses).  And then I came down with food poisoning on Saturday and spent all of Sunday prostrate in my bed. Although this time I wasn’t the only one ill, it was me and five other girls in the house who also ate the same bad chicken. Which was nice because I had some company when I was missing the most spectacular party night of the year. But the downside is that we were all competing for the one bathroom in the house at the same time. Wasn’t pretty.

Also Taryn was working nearly 10 hours a day at the restaurant which was unbelievably crowded the entire week because of the influx of tourists.  I think she was working herself to near exhaustion and she is just as glad as I am that week is over. And I’d rather not discuss it any further. On the bright side: I am alive, if not a few pounds slimmer. Semana Santa is over, and all the madness that came with it. And I have a new credit card and ATM card on the way. So there’s that.

Unlike the rest of the hispanic world, we still had to work during the holiday week and weekend. After recovering from the chicken incident I was pretty busy with the shifts at the orphanage, my English classes, and translating for the Belgians. Which has actually evolved into a good bit of complication and extra work for me but more on that later.

Despite the aforementioned minor bumps in the road, Taryn and I are loving it here. We have settled in to a nice routine of adventuring, relaxing, and yes, working. We were just discussing ways in which we could stay here forever (become English teachers, or gypsies). The weather, the food, the people, this organization… It’s all so incredible and unique and overall enjoyable. Other than the dirty little street kids that sell candy and rob people, there’s not much to dislike about the Peruvian culture in general.

I could really go for one of these right about now

One final thing: Last night I was hanging out with a bunch of the French volunteers for a friend’s birthday. We got on the topic of our favorite drinks and so I explained to them what a Bloody Mary is. They had never heard of it before (obvs) and thought it was hysterical that there is a drink we Americans put hot sauce in because apparently that has become a running joke here in the house. Also appalling to them was the fact that my mother and I drink them for breakfast on special occasions. They thought that was just riotous.

That’s all for now. Good stuff on the way though.

-Sarita

Today I ate a Guinea Pig…

…and now I think I might puke.  Not an entire guinea pig mind you. Just half of one. And it was deep deep fried.

The whole event was brought about for a friend’s despidida. It was a girl´s last day with the Casa Hogar before she heads back to France tomorrow. And apparently sampling the Peruvian delicacy, cuy, had been on her to-do list. So not wanting to pass that up, I went along too.

We went to a place here in our neighborhood of Carmen Alto. Its called El Mirador because it ´s located high up on a hill that overlooks the city of Ayacucho. It has an amazing view of the valley below, and a cluster of tourist-oriented restaurants built on the hill. Needless to say, we  were not the only Gringos there.

El Mirador

At the restaurant, my plan was to order grilled  fish (a favorite of mine) and just try a bite of someone else’s cuy. But everyone at the table ordered either a whole or a half guinea pig for their meal, and I didn’t want to be the wimp that was too scared to commit.

So, here it is. The cuy:

Served with the obligatory potatoes, corn and a wimpy salad. But they also brought around some ground-beef stuffed bell-peppers for everyone which was some kind of Semana Santa treat. If youre wondering, the head of the guinea pig is bent back, on the far left.

If that´s not frightening enough, you can even see its tinly little claws on its tiny little hind legs.

To my relief, my friends were equally creeped out…

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(She ordered a whole one)

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As far as flavor goes, it was really greasy, all dark meat.  There was probably only about 2 ounces of what I would consider edible meat on the whole half-animal. There were a lot of tiny little bones and thick chewy skin. I also noticed a few remaining hairs on my cuy, which informed me that my little guy was indeed a white guinea pig.

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Picking at the bones…

If you look closely, you will see the complete set of teeth we found in one of our cuy. This would obviously be half of a deep fried guinea pig head, if that needed to be clarified.

It was also a very expensive meal. It was fifteen nuevo soles ($5.50US) which is actually about four times what I tipically spend on lunch. Although I was able to take the side dishes home in a bag for leftovers.

Final verdict: No vale la pena. Not worth it. Too much work and too expensive for not a lot of meat, with not a lot of flavor. Also, I felt disgusting for the rest of the day. Not to mention the creep-out factor is really high with this dish. But I’m glad I tried it, just for the sake of sampling one of the most famous Peruvian dishes of all time. However from now on I will stick to potatoes and fish and other things without claws.

After cuy desert:  a snow cone with strawberry and banana-flavored syrup and topped with  sweetened-condensed milk, one nuevo sol  each. Refreshing.

Paz, y buen provecho todos

-Sarita

Crepes

We say crepes, (rhymes with tapes). The Peruvians say crepa, or panqueque. And the French say crep with a throaty accent that makes even a breakfast food sound sexy. Either way, this is how we make ‘em and sell ‘em. Today I was photographing Taryn and our German friend Astrid, working in the kitchen.

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Mixing large amounts of batter.

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Letting them burn. Just kidding. Astrid never lets them burn. She has been volunteering here at the Casa Hogar for over six months now, so she’s kind of an expert at the crepe-making.

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Spreading the manjar filling.

 

Sticky, delicious manjar blanco.

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Ready to hit the streets and sell comes crepes! Or crep, or crepa or whatever you want to call them…

Weekend Update

It’s been a busy week here at The Casa. I have been a little distracted recently due to an amoeba that has taken root in my stomach and kept me in its clutches for several days now.  I will spare you the details, but it seems to lay me out pretty good with sudden stomach cramps and sharp pain after eating and lots of other unpleasant stuff that sends me running for a bathroom. I’m not actually sure it’s an amoeba to be honest but all the signs on Webmd.com point to that, so that’s what we are assuming.

I got some unmarked pills from an odd-looking farmacy the other day. I just described my symptoms to a girl behind a counter that looked like she was 14 and she told me to take them with lots of hot herbal tea. Which I did not do. But things have been improving since I took the mystery pills, though I’m definitely not back to 100% yet. There’s no telling where it came from or how I got it and frankly at this point it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I am never more than 20 feet from a bathroom…

A slide from the beginners class

 In other, non-disgusting news: I started teaching English classes this week which is surprisingly stressful. My first class is Advanced English with three people, all older and all have a decent grasp of the basics already but want to improve their grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. I had a simple lesson prepared for them but they were bored by it, so we just talked (slowly) for an hour and a half. And I corrected them when they said something wrong. One of the things they asked me about was sarcasm, which I thought was kind of funny. What is it, why is there so much of it in the English language, and how they can get better at it. Oddly enough it’s not something that can be taught…

My second class is just two gentlemen who are total beginners and we spent the whole first class pronouncing the alphabet. If my former Spanish teachers are reading right now: I have a whole new respect for what you do and what you have to put up with. Thanks for not flunking me out of sheer frustration.

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I also started doing some translation work which has been interesting. There is a group of Belgian students here working on a university project that is somehow connected with the Casa Hogar. Part of their research requires them to visit families that have special needs kids and conduct a sort of interview. But five out of six of them don’t speak a word of Spanish so I was offered up as a translator for them. We’ve been dividing up into groups and doing these home visits and so far it’s been pretty astounding. I can tell the Belgians have been thoroughly moved and humbled. Every single visit so far has resulted in the mother being reduced to tears as she tells us her story about raising a child with a handicap of some kind while also living on the fringes of poverty and facing extreme social stigma. I think I am going to write more about it when we finish the series of house visits  and once I learn more about what the point of the project is because honestly I don’t really understand it yet. But the Belgians are hard workers and extremely nice and grateful to me and the other translators for helping them out.

Also Taryn has started a waitressing job at a fancy café in downtown Ayacucho. Via Via is easily the classiest place in town and we discovered it when we were searching for a place to hang out with wireless internet. You can usually count on running into a few other Gringos there on any given day. She seems to really like it, and I like having a reason to go sip fancy cappuccinos on the best balcony in the entire city.

Oh and one more reason to get excited: We are on the brink of Semana Santa here in Ayacucho. As we have experienced in other Catholic countries, the week preceding Easter is a big, big deal. And this is even more true here in Ayacucho which claims to host the second-largest Easter Sunday procession in the world, second only to the original in Sevillia, Spain. The guys in my Spanish class told me that there will be around 16,000 thousand people coming from out-of-town for the occasion, though only 1,000 of them are typically foreigners. Although I have it on good authority that there will be a large contingent of Peruvian Peace Corps volunteers coming for the weekend too. The crowds come to participate in the march through town, view the street murals in the streets and bull fights, artisan markets and also lots and lots of parties. You can expect a thorough report of all the festivities

And finally. Here is a picture of the big group of the French (and Belgian-French, and Canadian-French) Casa Hogar volunteers making dinner the other night:

They were celebrating because one girl’s mom sent her a box from home with some fancy French sausage and a mix for this odd stringy potato-cheese dish that was described to me as “like fondue but not”.  I completely destroyed any cool points I had earned throughout the evening by suggesting they put hot sauce on their precious cheese-potato-stuff. The French were obviously horrified by that suggestion. But whatever, I liked it anyway and I like that they include us in their gatherings, even if most of them speak strictly in French which leaves us piecing together bits of conversation and perpetually out of the loop…

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Time for my 3:00 ritual of wandering the streets till I find a cappuccino.

Paz ya’ll.

-Sarita