Entry #9, Discoteca!!!!

Saturday 6 new volunteers arrived in Ayacucho and we had to say goodbye to having the house to just the 5 of us! There is a family, two friends and a single woman by herself. They're part of this program called Insight - which is a group of only one week, so they do different things each day of the week, so that they are able to experience all of the different placements. They still insist that we all squeeze around one table for meals which are called to us by the cook ringing a bell.

With the new people here we thought we'd show them parts of Ayacucho since they only have a week. We arrived at the discoteca at 11, which until I arrived thought was an appropriate time - false. The place was empty, if it were a bad movie crickets would have been chirping. . . but we took advantage of the empty dance floor and the DJ was playing all sorts of American music, a few hours later they would play Grease Summer Nights, and EVERYONE knew the arm moves, it was hysterical! We danced with some local men who weren't creepy then made some friends with girls our age. We danced all sorts of dances; salsa, merengue and swing, it was super fun! As we were leaving the live band was just setting up, and we didn't leave early! The next day at 7 am I woke up, even after getting around 5 hours of sleep, probably less, but we're on such clockwork we can't break the cycle! Although I stay in bed until around 7:30 watching Amelia and Kathryn hustle and bustle around the room I finally am the last one of our roommates out of bed! What else is new?

Ever since the first week of visiting Quinoa and the Wari Ruins I have wanted to return and wonder around the ruins because they're so amazing! There's only about a 1% chance of ever running into anyone else while being at these ancient ruins. So Caitlin, Kasia, Amelia and I called Oscar, a local taxi driver who wants to great a taxi service and negotiated a price to drive us 45 mins one way to these ruins! The drive takes so long because he wanted to be safe with us around the insanely dangerous roads that hug the sides of cliffs. While there you can walk round and the ground is littered with shards of ancient pottery and Chilean turquoise that date back to around 400-600 AD. Disgusting, enormous FLYING crickets also litter the ground and use you as jumping block as they randomly will fly and hit you. The ruins also give a great view of the surrounding countryside which is nice to take pictures of the mountains and the constantly changing crazy weather! In the distance loomed an insane storm so we knew we only had an hour at most! Oscar waited/ napped in his taxi while we roamed the ancient graves and on the way back would stop along the way to have us take pictures of historical sights and picked Tuna - prickly pear - and had us try it. The tuna is found all over the cacti which grow abundantly over the rolling hills! It's about the only plant that grows in copious amounts! It was a wonderful day, and as we drove back the storm was brewing, making trees bend-over-backwards and rain pelted our windshield! When we got back it down poured! We were pretty lucky!!

Each week we'll have a few guest speakers in the afternoons regarding various subjects, yesterday we had a speaker who spoke about health insurance, family planning, sexually transmitted diseases etc etc. The obstetrician only spoke spanish so we had this male translator who decided sometimes to change what the doctor was saying. . . very annoying because we understood the majority of what she was saying - so we knew! For example, she was saying how Peru is very Catholic after the Spanish invaded, so since they're very Catholic they don't believe in condoms or birth control and she was saying that the government is trying not to step on the Churches toes but they want to educate people because in a normal family a mother will have anywhere from 5 - 12 kids!!!! Seriously insane! So the translator takes this information and turns it to tell us that the ways of catholics is the better way and the government is stopping giving the majority of the contraceptives for free - because now almost everything is free for the majority of the population. The number of births has decreased in the past few years but what appalled me the most was the Jungle statistics. The youngest age of girls having children is 10 YEARS OLD. Flipping disgusting!! The translator said no, no they don't have kids but we were staring at the statistics from 10 -15 in '08 52 ninos were born from that age group! I'm like Sir, hello we're not stupid nor are we blind! But overall a very informative speaker because we were able to learn about the different life insurances and hospitals etc.

In the prison yesterday I interviewed many of the women for the paper we have to write at the end of this internship. Their answers were very interesting and the majority of their dreams for the future are to return to school and continue working with their hands creating clothes, animals and mantas! It was really awesome to hear what they liked most about the volunteers as well.

Ciao