Busy Busy Busy Months

I apologize to anyone who actually reads this for the utter absence I have had with keeping up with my blog. The past few months have been a whirlwind for me, with starting projects, going to in service training, and teaching constantly. I have learned that in Peace Corps, there is no happy medium between being busy and having nothing to do. You will have a week of reading 5 novels in 5 days, and then a week so busy that you don't have time to wash your clothes for 3 weeks. Since the beginning of February, I have found myself continuously occupied. I suppose the best place to start right now is from where I left off....February. As mentioned before, February was an extremely busy month for me because I was teaching environmental science and English every day for summer vacation. Along with lots of working, February was a time for celebrations, most specifically Carnevale.
For Carnevale, my family built a tablada, a large wooden structure to offer to the community below us.

I participated in the tablada by buying 40lbs of mangoes to tie onto the tablada.







To decorate the tablada, fruits, sodas, plastic materials, people and animal shaped breads, candy, and confetti are tied onto the structure. After a day of decorating, a group of men carry the tablada 4km down the hill to the community just below us, Coptac, for a day of Carnevale celebrations. For the family that creates the tablada, which was my family this year, they are greeted in the community by tons of food, beer and music. After eating large amounts of fried guinea pig, potatoes and sheep soup, everyone moves into the nearby field to dance around the monte. The monte is a tree decorated with fruits and other gifts, and at the end of the night, you dance around it and take turns trying to chop it down. Once the monte is felled, everyone runs towards it to pull gifts off the tree, and of course continue to celebrate.







That's all I can muster for now, but there is so so so so much more to account for from these past few months.