Who's to Say

Happy Canada Day! Turns out today is a very important holiday for our Northern neighbors. I learned about this holiday from the several Canadians in the house, one being my roommate. I coincidentally put on a red shirt this morning and Amy told me that it was great that I was wearing red for Canada Day. Exactly why I had planned to wear it. I made all the Canadians sing their national anthem at breakfast. Oh Canada!

I found this map online showing Ayacucho and thought it would be great to show where I actually am in Peru.

School today was great. Logan and I planned a game of Jeopardy to help the older classes review some English topics they have studied. Fruits, Vegetables, Adjectives (and adverbs), Important Questions, and Forms of To Be were the categories. This was a new game for the students and teacher and they actually understood my Spanish directions! The girls liked it and we all had a lot of fun playing.

This afternoon we visited the traditional medicine garden at the university. Traditional medicine is a class and topic that nursing students at the university must take. Because most people here visit a traditional healer before they seek modern medical attention, the nursing students must learn about these beliefs. We walked around to the back of the nursing school building to the small garden. Each plant was labeled with a big white sign. Marisol, our volunteer placement director, showed us around and told us about the different plants.

She told us how her mother used to put these trumpet shaped white flowers under her pillow when she was a kid to help her sleep better. She said it worked very well. Marisol pointed out several different plants that help with cramps. Apparently, there are lots of plants that help with various women problems. She mushed up some leaves from a tree and told us how it is natural bug repellent. Marisol is allergic to repellent with DEET so she has to use these leaves. Some girls tried it and we could smell it from several feet away. We saw a eucalyptus tree, some oregano, rosemary, prickly pear cactus and many other plants I didn't recognize. It was quite interesting. Marisol said it was important to know how to use these various plants because if prepared incorrectly, then some can be poisonous or hallucinogenic. Yikes!

After the garden, me and 4 fun girls who are in college went to aerobics again. Different instructor this time. Not quite as exciting as Monday (see that entry if not already!), but still a good workout. After dinner, we were out of movies to watch and were all eager to do something, so we started a game a charades. Yes, we played charades. So fun! The first round we played acting out movies and TV shows. One team was considerably better than the other. My team was on the losing end (despite my extreme enthusiasm and Amy's tremendous charades skills).

The next round we switched up the teams to make is somewhat fair. There were about 10 people playing and we each got two small pieces of white paper and had to write names of different people on them. We wrote famous people as well as people we know in the house. Each round each team got 30 seconds to get their teammates to guess as many names as possible. The first round you could talk and say whatever you want (except the name, obviously). We got quite into it. As soon as someone on your team guessed the name, the person giving the clues would throw down that paper and scramble to open a new one. It was intense.

The next round we put the same names back in the jar and when we drew the little papers we couldn't talk and only do charades to get our teammates to guess. It was hilarious. By the third and final round you could only do one motion. This was even more funny. The names had been repeated each round so we were able to guess what our teammates were acting out surprisingly quickly. We were screaming the names and laughing so hard. It was a very fun night!

Who's to Say, Pat Green