March Madness and Easter Weekend

March 21st-23rd, 2008 Mancora, Peru

Semana Santa

Peruvians celebrate Holy Thursday through Easter with several days of holiday. Since my town doesn´t seem to celebrate anything (read the Christmas entry from 2007 for an especially disappointing holiday celebration anecdote), I took advantage of the free vacation days to head to the beach.

Originally we were headed to Chachapoyas in the higher altitude part of the jungle, where you can find the world´s third highest waterfall and 1000 year old ruins. But due to the rain, those plans were canceled.

Therefore, we hung out at the beach and literally did nothing. Besides getting destroyed by killer waves and tossing the football and discussing various issues such as universal health care, the public education system and the effectiveness of aid work. I mean we are Peace Corps Volunteers.

March 19th-20th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

March Madness

Perhaps the hardest part about living in a foreign country for a guy like me is the inability to watch the sports games I would like to. I mean Baylor actually made the tournament this year after spending decades in a drought. Of all of March Madness, I have watched about 10 minutes of one game. Although other networks might have the rights to certain games, ESPN Deportes usually is able to pick up most matches. But sometimes they fail. Hence the reason that golf was being showed most of the first two days of March Madness.

The other volunteers and I could only day dream about spending two straight days at Buffalo Wild Wings next year. If I have vacation days by then, I might consider taking two days off just to eat wings, drink wheat beer and salivate over 17 screens each featuring different games.

March Madness has not only been confined college basketball this year. Check out the NBA. In the Western Conference, nine teams are vying for 8 playoff spots and are mostly within 2 games of each other. Someone will win 50 games this year and not make the playoffs. Hopefully, I will be able to catch a least a few games as the NBA is much better known here than college basketball.