PSF update

It's now been two months since I left for Peru. I'm still having a good time and I'm not ready to go quite yet, but I can feel that I need a break from PSF. Life in the house is hectic, stressful, crazy, and generally a lot of fun! I know I need more time to myself, but when I'm up in my room hanging out, I can hear the laughter of people in the courtyard, drinking beer around the fire, and I always have to come out.

Last week was a very stressful week. One of the hotels that supplies us with quite a bit of used vegetable oil was too busy to give us oil (twice!), and we skipped a week of going to the steel factory that also gives us a lot of oil. We were using more oil than we were producing and my stores were getting low. Then the one Peace Corps worker here in Pisco came by to see how much biodiesel he could get for the fishermen here, who get the fuel as a loan which they will pay back in a few months when their catch comes in. I couldn't actually give him any, and he was bugging me about getting more in a week...but I didn't even have enough raw oil to make more biodiesel! Luckily, the week turned out great because a new Burner girl named Page showed up who is interested in the project and also is fluent in Spanish! She called many places for me and has been running around town with me trying to find more. She even found a new culinary school just down the road and we're working on getting them as a supplier (will find out tomorrow - fingers are crossed!). All in all though, the week turned out okay. I got enough oil from places to turn out one batch that is washing at the moment, and tomorrow I'll start another. If they are good, I'll be all set.

On top of that good luck, today Page and I were walking around the main plaza trying to find more sources of oil, when this Peruvian man started talking to us. He asked first if we were PSF volunteers, then mentioned he is friends with Harold and Carolina (Harold is the PSF president and his sister, Carolina, is the house manager). He then said that he used to drive around with the old biodiesel volunteers to restaurants to get oil, and that he would do that for us for free! He said he's a volunteer too. How nice! So we got into his tuk-tuk and we stopped by a couple of places and talked to people. How awesome is that!?

In other news, my roommate Karine and I have become the new PSF barbers. I've probably done 5 or 6 men's haircuts/trims so far, and I have a bit of a waiting list now! I think though that from now on, a haircut is going to cost 10 soles (about $3.50) and maybe a beer. The beer for me to drink during the cut, and the 10 soles for the new jackhammer fund that PSF has started since our jackhammer broke and we desperately need a new one. I think I've been getting pretty good at cutting hair...but I really wouldn't want to do it for a living! I'd rather be a colorist, ha!


I like it here, but it really depends on the day and time of day you ask me. Some people here suck, and some are amazingly awesome. Sometimes I get stressed out driving the truck around all day, trying to get groups to their jobs, finding the places, and trying to get their quickly without smashing into a tuk-tuk or hitting a pedestrian that just walks out in front of traffic without looking. Sometimes I don't sleep well because it's hot and all night I can hear honking, huge trucks roaring by, and damned loud roosters crowing, so I get up in the morning tired and uninspired. And some days you talk to a local and have an amazing experience trying to sort through your broken Spanish and their broken English, but in the end you all just laugh a lot. Some days I forget I'm in Peru.

Bio-Dessel

It's been six weeks now that I've been at Pisco Sin Fronteras. I love it here. Every day I am doing something new and exciting, or meeting someone new and exciting. Of course it's very sad when friends leave... you wonder if you'll ever see them again. But amazingly, more awesome people come every day. I can't complain a bit!

Not long after I started learning to make bio-diesel here, the guy who was teaching me left. So I took over as bio-diesel manager. In this project I've worked on making safety guides, editing our bio-diesel manual, writing the trouble-shooting guide and fixing other odds and ends. I also get to drive out to Paracas where there are hotels like Hilton and I pick up their used vegetable oil to make bio-diesel. We use the bio-diesel to run our work truck (on b100 - pure bio-diesel - not a blend) and we also loan it to the fishermen nearby who will pay us for it when their catch comes in around June. In the long term, I hope to help streamline the process, find more good oil sources, and ready PSF for bio-diesel production for other customers. It's a bit tough to do this stuff without knowing Spanish well, but I do get help from other volunteers here.

I also have started a bio-diesel class here. There are many volunteers here who want to learn how to make bio-diesel. Thing is, when I make it I really don't need a lot of help, so other volunteers are usually out on site working when I make a batch. I had my first class last week, which I feel went well, but could have gone better. Now that I know what kinds of questions people were asking, I can do more research and be better prepared for the next one. I was shocked at how many people showed up - there were probably 30 people watching! I was hoping for a smaller class, where we could just all fit inside the bio-shack and just talk about how things worked. Maybe next time (fingers crossed).

A week into my PSF stay

It's been such a busy, exciting week I haven't had time to write my blog! Okay, so it's been a week and a half, but go easy on me, the internet's been down for a couple of days.

I flew into Peru and stayed the night in Lima before taking the four-hour bus ride down to Pisco. I was a bit worried as we drove through sand dunes and desolate desert villages. I was right to be worried. Pisco is a desert town. I'm used to this, sure, but I've never been in a desert that's so barren. They have a few trees and cactus planted about, but this town makes Mesa seem like a rain forest.



I went straight to the casa de voluntarios and headquarters of Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF). I got set up in a hostel-style room with three other girls, nicknamed the Powder Room. I live on the top of a creaky wooden bunk bed and sleep on a mattress made of hay. I tried to soften it a bit by sleeping on top of a leftover sleeping bag, thin camping mat, and my fuzzy blanket. It helps slightly, but my limbs still fall asleep often because there's no cushioning to give them room when I lay on my side. I have actually made my lower bunk-mate think there's an earthquake going on when I've climbed down from my bed. There's a beam above my head that is where I need to take cover under if I can't get out of the house and an earthquake happens. I'm actually really excited for an earthquake to happen, just so I can feel what that feels like, but I really hope it doesn't happen when I'm up in my bunk bed!

Every morning we get up for breakfast at about 7:30. It's usually oatmeal, fruit salad, scrambled eggs with veggies, rolls with jam, and tea. Sometimes the volunteers who choose to make breakfast will change it up (we got pancakes last week and they were GREAT), but it's generally this. At 8:30, we must be dressed for the day and ready to go, and at that time we gather outside for the morning meeting. The morning meeting serves as a platform for announcements, job placement, and hellos and goodbyes from volunteers who seem to be coming and going everyday. All the jobs are listed on a white board and people volunteer to clean various parts of the house, make dinner or breakfast, or go to a job site. Many people go to the same job site the whole time because they like the family or just get really invested in the work they're doing. Jobs include helping out at the ludoteca (like a free, voluntary school for kids who aren't at public school), helping build houses or pour concrete slabs, work on the earth-bag construction community center, gathering scrap wood from the gigantic metal factory and de-nailing it, or admin type jobs (I think you have to apply for those).


My first day I helped make dinner. This is an all-day job! First we spent some time picking up the ingredients at the market. The market is a huge maze of stalls with people selling everything from toys to fresh chicken feet to underwear. We had to go to multiple little stalls to get our veggies, cheese, spices, chicken, and oil. Back at the house we chopped veggies (after soaking them in bleach water) and fried up eggplant and chicken to make eggplant and chicken parmeasan. There's always a head count at the morning meeting to see how many hippies and monsters we have (vegetarians and non) so the cooks know how much of what to cook. I LOVE this! There are usually quite a few vegetarians too, though many who come to South America take up meat again because it's so difficult to eat here otherwise. I personally have started eating eggs again since we have them almost daily at breakfast, and I've been picking meat out of dishes often because it's either that or starve (and I turn into the Hulk when I'm hungry).




The next day I went to the largest steel factory in Peru, Aceros Arequipa. There, past the factory and through dunes, is a slab of concrete with piles of scrap wood and pallets. The company lets us sift through those and some old tarps and take what we can use, then trucks it back to the wood yard we use across the street from the volunteer house. This job doesn't take all day, but it is quite hard. I was looking forward to the early day, but when we got back, we were recruited to help out with a concrete pour. This is tough and takes many people - people to shovel gravel and sand into the mixer, to gather water, and to pour buckets into wooden troughs to make foundations and columns in buildings we make. Not incredibly fun.



Over my first weekend I went beach camping with about twenty other volunteers. We borrowed some poles, rope, and tarps to make one long tent to sleep in. It was very beautiful - a nice change of scenery from the sad, dusty desolation of Pisco. We had a campfire at night and stayed up drinking, then relaxed the next day, making a big sand castle and also catching crabs and mussels for dinner. While gathering crabs we found lots of little blue and purple crabs under the rocks which were very pretty! Also, walking along the rocky shore, a pod of dolphins dropped by to check us out! It was amazing!














The start of my second work-week was a very snotty, sniffly one. And just at the end of the week, when my sniffles were subsiding, I got the dreaded "Pisco belly." People generally just get an upset stomach and get dehydrated here, most likely from the poor water quality and eating foods that may have been washed or grown in it. People say there's fecal matter in the water because of the earthquake and the lack of a decent sewage system. We boil water for at least ten minutes before using it to cook, and all dishes and vegetables get at least a minute in water with a bit of bleach in it. But most of us still get Pisco belly. I didn't work Friday because of it and got to learn about the joys of delicious re-hydration salts. Yum!

The week was cool though because I got to work on the earth-bag community center, then finally on the bio-diesel system. We ran my first batch this weekend. Lots of little issues and things to fix! The methanol and lye solution that we mix with filtered veggie oil tends to crystallize in the pipes and block up the works, so we had a bit of cleaning to do due to that. Last night we mixed the meth oxide with the hot veggie oil and then let it settle overnight. Today, we have to dump the remainder, glycerol, and send the newly made bio-diesel into a series of water washes. The oil sits on top of water and the grit and crap settles into the water. Then it has to go to dry in another tank before it's done. But first we have to test samples of it to make sure most of the glycerol has been separated out.



Days we work hard and nights we sit around a camp fire and drink beer and eat cake (bought from the "cake lady" around the corner who has cakes, beer, water, and can do our laundry).

Headed to Peru

Alright! I am happy to say I have a plan. It's been a strange few months being home. I started out thinking I was going to leave in September with Tanya, but I'm ending up leaving in December solo.

Being home has been awesome and I'm going to be sad to leave. I think maybe I stayed too long, making it harder to leave (I love my friends too much). This will be good though. Finally doing some volunteer work which I've been wanting to get into since before I left for Korea (I had considered Peace Corps back then).

Oh! You're probably wondering what I'm doing! Well, in all my searching and planning I'd almost forgotten about Burners Without Borders. They are a group of burners (those who attend Burning Man), who started their group in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. They went down there and just started cleaning up. Then more burners came. Soon they were an organized group and everyone lived happily ever after, cleaning up after storms around the world. Really though, they've also gone to Haiti and Peru to help out. I'll be going to Pisco, Peru, where BWB has been and left in their wake a group called Pisco Sin Fronteras (in English, Pisco Without Borders). This group is still there and works with the locals to clean up the environment and construct new homes after the 2007 earthquake, and also to help teach kids English and paint murals in kid's spaces. They also have a bio-diesel program to help fund the organization. I'll be going down there to join them on December 7th and I don't know how long I'll stay. We'll see how awesome it is or how long I can stand it!

I'm really looking forward to meeting a lot of other foreign travelers, Peruvian locals, also learning Spanish and traveling to other destinations in South America, like Machu Picchu and Angels Falls. Going to be quite the journey!

Middle of November and still in America!

As you may have noticed, my travel plans have changed considerably! I went from planning to come home, go to Burning Man, visit friends and family, then head to Central and South America with Tanya to still being here, working, and planning the trip solo. Life happened to Tanya so she's going to stay in Beijing to work and live a while longer. This leaves me going south alone with scares the crap out of me!

Tanya and I were going to just head down to the beach to relax a while before doing any work or volunteering. We could couch-surf and just figure it out as we went. This doesn't work for me though. I'm fine traveling alone, but I think for extended periods without a buddy I would get bored. Not to mention how much more dangerous it would be! So I want to find a more structured travel plan. I've been looking at taking intensive Spanish courses, maybe surf lessons, joining up with a volunteer organization, or just finding work in Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile...wherever! I want to see it all anyway.

I'm getting close to having a solid plan, but I won't disclose details quite yet. I'm getting very excited about leaving, but I'm having so much fun here too! I've been catching up with old friends, making new ones, and just having a great time. I've been working for my old boss, Chris, at the welding shop. We got the Phoenix Zoo as our big client this time, and since I've been back I've worked on a reptile exhibit, the new koala exhibit, tore down and rebuilt the bear fence, and am about to install HUGE baboon/mandril cages to their inside area. These things get rusted out and need to be replaced. It's nice working at the zoo (when the weather's nice). There are monkeys that sing in the morning and plenty of other animal noises to keep us entertained. Sometimes we have strange birds watching us, like the peacocks that roam freely about the zoo, or the vultures that watched me work on the reptile area (a little creepy).

I love being home, but I'm antsy to get moving again!

Thanks

I have quite a few people to thank for my journey and the direction my life has gone. I realize whenever I explain to somebody new about what I'm doing and how I got there, I have been lucky in so many ways, mainly because of the awesome people I have in my life.

Thank you Mom. You taught me how to be a good person and how to take care of myself. You've helped me through many obstacles, including schooling, and I appreciate your continued guidance and support (but would ya quit worrying about me?!).

Thanks Dad for supporting me through school when I needed it and for showing me so many things growing up. Thanks for teaching me that I can fix things myself.

Thank you David for the long talks and for encouraging me to support my opinions logically in our little debates! Thanks for giving an alternate point of view when I am surrounded in people who generally agree with me most of the time.

Thank you Mary for keeping me in the loop while I was in Korea (when Dad seemed to be allergic to email!).

Thanks Tanya for gentle guidance and support in my life decision-making. Thanks for the positivity and love you have an abundance of! And thank you so much for visiting me in Korea and burning with me.

Thanks Chris Kornegay for hiring me, convincing me to stay a little longer, letting me leave and then letting me come back. Thanks for teaching me how to weld and for putting up with my snarky attitude!

Thanks Dean for understanding.

Thank you thank you thank you Ruvi, Shereen, Rekha and Aasha. I've never met more generous and open, loving people. The great advice you have given will stay with me forever. Thanks Shereen for all the amazing food and for showing me how to make some of it. Thanks Rekha for teaching me all I ever needed to know about Star Wars (and for always making me giggle).

I also want to thank the following people for general support, love and/or guidance, Chelsea Kent, Justin Dessel, Tara Irwin, Heather Walters, Thomas Leach, Jim Jordan, Derek Buranen, Grandma and Grandpa Dessel and family, Grandma and Grandpa Moellers and family, Lorna Rothmeyer, Matt Wohltman, Lizzy Miller, Chris Kasych, Chris Manfredi, Eric Kim and Kay, Jo Young Min, Kat Smith, Jennifer Gorman, Wendy Havlik, and all my burner family. I don't know where I would be without you.

Thanks!!!

Burning Man 2010

August 2010 marked my second year at Burning Man. This is an annual arts festival held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada which has been going on for over 20 years. The idea is that all the attendees are the citizens of a temporary city, it is an experiment in community and self-reliance in that everybody must bring whatever they need to survive one week in one of the harshest environments in America. You can only buy coffee and ice. There are no sales of anything else, including art, food or drink, etc. If you want it, you bring it. The people who go (called burners) often deck their camps out in decorations and/or provide some gift in their camp, like a bar, a dance floor and DJ, or maybe some interactive art. Then there’s art that people bring and construct out in the middle of the playa (the open desert space within and around the city) that we can all walk around and look at or play with. There are also art cars crawling around the city, which are all mutated to the point where they are no longer cars, but various animals or other objects. The end of the week-long event is marked by the burning of a very large wooden man (we call him “the man”). Artists are not paid, they just do it because they want to. Tickets are far from free, but they help pay for the organizers, the porta-potties, and other urban necessities, like on-site ambulances...which are used surprisingly often.






My burn did not start out the way I thought it would. Due to life, my entire camp had to bail on this year’s burn. No Wasef this year. No Tanya to lose my mind with. Luckily, another friend invited me to stay in his camp with four other awesome Phoenix-area burners. The week and a half I had in Arizona before the event was spent gathering many supplies I no longer had - a bike, a tent, sleeping gear, goggles for the intense dust storms the playa is known for, something fun to wear (costuming is a HUGE part of Burning Man!), and many other necessities for living in the desert.

I rode up in an RV with my friend Ruvi and several others. I learned my first year that RVs are the way to go! Got plenty of sleep there and back. The catch is that you have to clean every last speck of dust out of them when you get home or you and your mates have to pay an exorbitant cleaning fee (and playa’s favorite past time is sneaking bits into places you didn’t know existed.)





My camp was great! We had a flamingo-based theme, complete with painted furniture, flags, and even plastic lawn flamingos (which were curiously labeled “plastic livestock” on the shipping box), which we of course molded into naughty positions. My camp mates even made a large number of flamingo/Burning Man 2010 dog tags to give out to our friends, new and old (mine even has my name on it!) We had a bar as well, and our lovely neighbor to the east, Charles, regularly graced us with his DJ-ing skills. To add to the awesomeness of my camp, right next door was a camp that included a good friend of mine from Orange County whom I hadn’t seen in a couple years, and one of his camp mates made fabulous dinners every night (which I was invited to enjoy as well). Then on the other side of their wonderful camp were my other burner friends from Arizona. They were camped next to the porta-potties, so any given trip from camp to the loo took around an hour with all the stops for socializing. Home rocked!








Without the girlfriend I thought I was going to have with me there, I mostly ran around during the day by myself, seeking adventure. I would pick an event or a friend’s camp I wanted to visit, and just let the playa pull me in whatever direction along the way. Like maybe I would aim to find a friend, but get hollered at by a bar-full of burners beckoning me over for a drink. Sometimes it took a while to get to where I wanted to go, but that was the point. I never wore a watch, just sometimes checked the sun’s position to see how much daylight I had left before it got dark (and cold). There are just so many camps at the burn with fun things to do, I could wander all day by myself and have a grand time, not worried about what other events I may be missing or what time it is. There are trampolines, dance floors, bars, giant seesaws, jungle gyms, and other fun things to climb on all over the place. And the citizens of Black Rock brought it all! It’s one of the most amazing places I’ve seen on this planet so far. The creativity, acceptance of different people, and the giving spirit are astounding. Don’t get me wrong, Burning Man is not totally full of hippies and tree-huggers. There’s a wide range of folks here. Many are just so different from what you would expect (carnivorous, red-meat loving BBQ-ers, people who have no problem wasting large amounts of propane to make lovely explosions, and also people who just want to ruin your day by telling you to “fuck off”). But it’s amazing to see what people achieve with the freedom from criticism and failure that this event allows us.










On the Monday we arrived, the streets were nice and packed down by dried rain (very convenient for us cyclists), but that evening it stormed for a while. I hid in my tent from the cold and curled up in the blankets for about an hour, until I heard the wind and rain subside and the residents of Black Rock City start cheering. Cheering? I guessed they were really happy it stopped raining! But then I heard my camp mate Kurt imitating that silly “double rainbow” Youtube video (“What does it mean?!”), so I went outside and saw what the cheering was about. Yet another burn with a double rainbow! Not a bad start to the week. Only bad thing was that since it rained and people walked on the streets afterward, clumps of playa were kicked up and dried the roads into a cobblestone street system. Great. Had to hold my butt off my bike seat all week to avoid the bruising.

The week went incredibly smoothly and wonderfully. The weather started out chilly, but warmed up nicely throughout the week. I did not have the ex-boyfriend drama I was sure I was going to suffer through, him being camped a couple hundred feet from me. We even got along! Also, I was surprised to find a few friends there that I didn’t know were coming, like Paula who’d moved to Colorado and Hamish who came all the way from Australia! Very awesome surprises!



Another fabulous surprise was that I actually found my friend Roxy. She and I both went to Arizona State and lived next to each other a year ago. I’d forgotten where her camp was and she had trouble finding mine, so both of us were a bit worried. But it was only Tuesday when I was out with Dixon and he went over to compliment a cute girl on her very cool chopper-style bicycle, and I looked over to find it was Roxy he was chatting with! Awesome coincidence. We met each other’s friends and had some fun with a bunch of hula hoops that just happened to be there (what?!)






So during the day I would traipse around and find friends to hang with, then at night I would find friends to spend the eve with and we’d generally go lose our minds out on playa. I got lost in some incredible psychedelic art that appeals to all the senses. One of my favorite things was this thing that (I think) was called “Electric Lazy.” It was a lazy-boy with wheels that was pulled around the playa by two cyclists on their bikes. The chair was covered in cushioning and fur, and when you sat down, they reclined you in it and warmed you up in a fur blanket. A set of glasses with strobe-lights covered your closed eyes, and headphones played ambient music. When it all started, the chair vibrated in unison with the lights and music. The shapes you normally see when you concentrate on your closed eyes became more pronounced and your body just felt like it was no longer on this planet. I just got lost in an abyss of freedom from normal senses, just comfort, visions, and movement.








Wednesday was the Arizona burners’ Santarchy or Santacon. This is where we all dress up in santa suits and go on a rampage! We do this every December in Phoenix and it is incredibly fun! The turnout this last year was around 200! Other cities do this too. Anyway, it was fun on playa because our friend Chris brought his sno-cone machine so we surprised unsuspecting burners with snowballs!











On Thursday was the annual bunny march, so a bunch of us donned ears and tails and went out to the playa. This event was huge! There were hundreds of bunnies! There were bunny art cars there, including my friend Fuzzy’s which I hopped on (no pun intended) and rode around for the event. Another art car was from my friend Dean’s camp - Black Rock City Animal Control. They were capturing and tagging loose bunnies all over the place. I pointed out to a few random bunnies that we out-numbered Animal Control, so we attacked one of theirs and tackled him on the ground. I got tagged twice (so came out with a couple BRC Animal Control tags). Found Dean near their art car and said hi. Their car is a big van with bars on the back where they capture stray “animals” out on playa. The front has a large hanging carrot to attract the bunnies. It’s really easy to find friends like Dean and Fuzzy when they have an art car they’re usually with.


On the bunny march I met Konrad, a Polish guy who came all the way from Michigan for the burn. We hung out on the bunny car for a while that night and later went out on playa to see a really awesome DJ called Bassnectar. We were meant to watch him at Root Society, which has an amazing setup. The DJ booth there is set into a big framed structure with canvas stretched across the front surrounding the DJ. Two movie projectors are set up to display images and video to go with the music. But there is space behind the canvas, so dancers go back there or even better, a couple my camp neighbors hung silks behind it and dressed up in gold suits to perform aerials. It was incredible. Though this night, Bassnectar had to move from Root Society to another very awesome dance floor called Nexus. Nexus had a giant steel globe that shot fire out of it from all sides, a domed dance floor with a beautiful cityscape wooden art piece backdrop, and on each side of this dome were adult-sized jungle gyms, with huge swings and chains and rope ladders to play or dance on. So awesome!





Friday was spent trying to find my bike (fail, someone moved it or stole it), and running around with Roxy by ourselves finally. Nice to get some girl time! We wandered about playing on art and talking to people. It was very fun, but we ended up staying up way too late! Only too late because when you try to sleep in your tent during the day it gets too hot. Saturday was spent recovering (my body was upset with me for all the abuse) and I had to hide out in my friend’s RV for a while. Luckily, I recovered and got my steam back that evening and was ready for the burn! But the dust storms that had raged on all day barely subsided enough and the fireworks and explosions that make the man burn so awesome were a bit difficult to see through all the dust. Nonetheless, I had an amazing burn night and stayed up once again till the sun came up out dancing and socializing with Konrad and whomever else crossed our paths.




By Sunday morning I was ready to go home and be free from the constant dry dust. Once in the RV I slept like a rock for most of the way home and couldn’t even be awoken for food. It felt good to get home and clean everything! The dust tends to get to you by the end. Time to hose everything down and take one big load of laundry to the cleaners!


Some of the things I took home from this year’s burn are feelings of freedom and relaxation. I really got out of the habit of constantly needing to know what time it is. It was really nice not caring. I have been deliberately not looking lately because I don’t care to know. I just want to eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired, and come and go when I want to. Of course, one can only go so far with this because of work and other responsibilities, but when applicable, I highly recommend this practice. Another feeling I brought back was that feeling of not caring if my art lives up to the expectations of others. It does me no good to think up an idea and not go through with creating it for whatever silly reasons I seem to come up with (it’s expensive, it might not turn out to be that cool, I don’t know where to put it, etc.) It’s about time I get back to making things the way I used to, though travel does make it tough.