making a list and checking it twice

Now that my schoolwork is officially done (yay! I finally finished around 4pm on Monday when I sent my contribution to my project to my groupmates a day later than we agreed upon), my time has been dedicated to doing everything I wanted to do in Lima but still haven´t done yet. Unfortunately, a little sickness put a damper on this plan. Tuesday I woke up feeling absolutely terrible- sore throat, headache, sweats, the works. Luckily in Peruvian pharamcies you can get perscription medication in the US over the counter and a pharamician or whatever they´re called to talk to you about it. So, I perscribed myself a mini Z-pack (for 3 days instead of 5), and maybe a pretty miraculous comeback. Since then, I´ve been loving Lima even more!

Sunday night I went to a Grupo Cinco concert! That was my reason (and I think justified) for getting my work to my group late. Stephanie´s host sister invited me, and she says Grupo Cinco is sort of like New Kids on the Block, but actually they´re the most famous singing group in Peru and their music can be regularly heard on all the micros. It was such an adventure! We picked up 2 of her friends (who were both late), and the friend that was driving couldn´t find parking anywhere, so we ended up driving all the way back to my neighborhood and taking a cab from a parking lot there. There were 80,000 people at the concert! The street was lined with people for blocks and blocks, and we made our way to a table, but we could barely hear or see the screens. Somehow we snuck past police that were too busy yelling at other people, convinced a bouncer to let us in to the press section, and pushed our way forward to an awesome view! Luckily the band was later than we were, and we knew every song they played. I had been wanting to see them in concert since I came here!

Wednesday I went to the Bull Fighing Museum called Acho. I sort of wanted to see a bull fight (they take place during the month of November), but I whimped out, and based on what I saw at the museum, that was a good decision. We saw lots of old photos, bull heads, and the uniforms the fighters wear. We also got to go into the plaza (all by ourselves) where the bull fights take place and hold the spears that they use to kill the bulls (it doesn´t look like much more than a wooden poll, but they´re really sharp at the end). We asked to go through the museum "sin guía" (without a guide), but somehow we still got a guide who kept offering to take pictures of us and talking about more information than we imagined existed on bull fighting. I learned that we have bull fighting in the US too (mostly near the border of Mexico), but we´re not allowed to kill the bulls.

Afterwards on Wednesday, I went to Juliet´s house for lunch. She lives in Barranco, and her host-dad is an art professor, so I was dying to see their house. It did not disappoint! She lives right off the ocean on a quiet little street, and her house is filled with amazing art. Her host-mom prepared a really amazing lunch of roasted chicken, french fries, and rice (very typical). And, Juliet made a cake! After we were stuffed, Juliet´s host-mom played the guitar and sang. She also asked all of us to sing, and I gave a great rendition of "Mary Has a Little Lamb." We sat outside on her porch and watched the sun set over the ocean, and it was so beautiful.

Last night I went to a bar and tried the best maracuya sour in Peru. The bar is pretty hip and on the second and third floor of a pretty well known restaurant called Brujas de Cachince. Although I would agree that it was the best sip of a maracuya sour I ever had (though I haven´t actually tried all that many maracuya sours at other places), the other drinks were better! I tried a fresa and granadilla dakari (I´m really going to miss the fruit here) and my favorite Peruvian drink algarrobina, which tasted more like Merrymead chocolate milk with some cinnamon. Afterwards my Peruvian friend Elisa that took us to this bar insisted that we go to a club as yet another thing we have to do before we leave Lima, which was funnily enough right next to a Wong. Though the club was nothing special, confetti fell from the ceiling 3 times and it was a really fun night (and my only Wednesday night out in Lima).

This afternoon I went to parapente, which is Spanish for parasailing or paragliding. It was so awesome! It was sort of hard to find the place where they take off from (it´s somewhere between Larcomar, Parque del Amor, and the lighthouse), but once we found it there were a lot of sails. We paid a little more than we wanted to, but they recently explained they raised prices and supposedly all charge the same amount and beling to one union (though we still negotiated it down for cheaper). My parasail was blue, teal, and orange, of course! It was a little scary for the first few minutes, then the guide and I just hung in the air. We flew over really tall buildings, over the ocean, over the Marriot, over a lighthouse, over the highway, over Larcomar, and Lima never looked so beautiful! The weather was also really perfect (not too hot but sunny and breezy), and all my pictures came out so nicely (I cant believe I took pictures from the air!). The time in the air went by really quickly, but it was still so fun, and the last item I wanted to do on my list!

the home stretch

I thought I was almost ready to come home until this morning. It´s not that I don´t want to come home because I miss my friends, my family, my classes, bagels, and a lot of other American things, but I don´t want to leave here either. This week my family was a little frustrating- my host-sister and the cousin came back and my host-brother took a long weekend, which means I´m now sharing a bathroom with 6 other people and I found 3 tubes of toothpaste (other than mine) in the bright orange cup I brought here and use daily to brush my teeth. Also the honeymoon period for my 2 nephews is over because they´ve had some really intense fights that have gotten so bad my host family had to rearrange all the TVs in the house. I was pretty convinced I would welcome to change of pace until my host-mom sat with me at my breakfast (which was considerably later than everyone else´s breakfast) and told me that it was really going to be hard on her and the rest of the family that I was leaving because I´ve made such a difference in the house. I teared up and barely choked out a response that I would definitely miss them just as much, and then I went back to my room to try to not cry and think about the upcoming week.

I am so close to being done my schoolwork, and it´s going to be nice to be able to enjoy next week without worrying about anything. I just finished my Peruvian Social Reality final paper, which is due tomorrow. And, I´m finishing up my part of a group project (the project is due Tuesday but I told them I would get my part in tonight so I wouldn´t have to worry about anything else). I got a 19 on the paper and the presentation I did for my Spanish class, which is a really, really good grade. But, I had a really, really terrible final for my International Political Economy class; on Wednesday I picked it up at 11am, and I had to return it by 11am on Thursday, and I definitely spent at least 10 of those 24 hours trying to write 6 single-spaced pages in Spanish. I worked on it with a classmate, and we literally did not move from a table in my house for 6 hours.

Right in the middle of this exam period was the CIEE Host-Family Cocktail Party. I was really looking forward to going, but it wasn´t really enjoyable because it was poorly planned and I was stressed about my exam. They left over 2 hours to mingle (supposedly because we were waiting on 2 students to arrive), and I finally said I had more important stuff to do so they can either begin now with me here or wait for them and do it without me (and my host-dad who had left 30 minutes into the party). I stayed long enough to hear Melvin ramble, Marion say the same things she always says, and take a group picture that the remaining members of my host family didn´t even want to be in. Everyone was supposed to speak about their host-family experience, but my family was so bored they didn´t even care, and I assured them I can give them a speech whenever I want.

Thursday was a special party for my Spanish class. We were going to lunch at a Peruvian restaurant, but I insisted that we should do chifa because I am so used to eating at the same chifa every Thursday after Spanish class. It was a really nice lunch, and I´m going to miss my professors. It just dawned on me that that was my last class, my last time going to my university here, and my last Thursday chifa lunch. I guess I´m glad I didn´t think of it at the time because it would have made me sad, but this coming week is also going to be filled with lots of lasts.

Example: Tuesday was the last time I went to Polvos Azules. I had a really successful trip, I think because I wrote down the actors and the years of all the movies I wanted to help them figure out how to say the English titles in Spanish. I found a really great stand, and even though it took some patience, the vendors found almost everything on my list! I also found some great CDs (I was hunting Peruvian music), and I got one CD with 147 songs for only 5 soles! I said bye to my Lacoste shirt lady. Unfortunately, I didn´t get the Replacements, which was a big disappointment because it was one of the only things my Dad asked for. Almost nobody knew what I was talking about, someone brought me the Matrix, and maybe the 15th person I asked said he thought I knew what he was talking about but didn´t know the title. My theory is that it was never popular here because they don´t have Ameriacn football. I tried to get the John Adams series to make up for it, but nobody knew what I was talking about- I finally had a vendor offer to make it for me, but when I called him to pick it up he said he couldn´t get it. I also hunted my old Nintendo games, and I finally found a stand that had them (they don´t keep them on display), it was like seeing gold! They only had Mario 1, 2, and 3, and they said it takes like 2-3 weeks to make them. I really wonder how they manage to pirate them.

This weekend was pretty fun. Thursday I went to a house party (more like a small apartment gathering), but it was almost reminiscent of parties at Richmond. Friday was the birthday of someone in my program, and I didn´t actually want to go but it turned out really fun because so many of my friends went. Saturday I did karaoke with my Spanish professors Rocio and Luis, which was something we all had been talking about for a really long time. And Saturday-day I spent with my Peruvian friend Jimena. I went to her house (her parents are always so happy to see me), then we took a paseo to the outskirts of Lima to a really nice park / zoo. There were all sorts of animals (my favorites were the white tiger, the endandered otters, and the Chilean flamingoes), nice restaurants, a river, and a lake with flamingo paddle boats. Afterwards we watched a movie at her house, and she told me that if she passes her exam for the Peruvian diplomatic core in February (which I hope she does), her present to herself (or maybe from her parents) is going to be a trip to the US over our summer so she can stay with me, which I would love!

finals

Right now I´m in finals-mode. I´m basically tired and disorganized, but my game plan is to just make is through Thursday at 11am, and I´ll be home free literally (except for a group project due the 9th). I had 2 finals today. The first was for my Peruvian Social Reality class; I had to write 2 essays (in Spanish, of course) and I got a choice between 4 questions, and though they weren´t the questions I would have chosen, I´m pretty confident that I came up with somewhat interesting theses and showed off that I paid attention in class and did at least some of my reading. In the afternoon, I had my final for my Spanish class, which was a paper and an oral presentation on that paper. I worked with Stephanie and we used our volunteer work with Flora Tristán to put together a really interesting study about the sexuality of young Peruvians. We surveyed the students we taught about their opinions on abotion, how many kids they want, how many siblings they have, how often they go to the doctor, etc., and gave the same survey to the youngest students we could find in our university- the comparisons turned out really interesting! Hopefully I´ll get a good grade on that too.

Speaking of my volunteer work, on Wednesday we worked at the clinic. There wasn´t much to do, so we decorated and in my eyes finally completed the make-over process. Our boss Pilar told the director of the clinic just to hire someone to paint, and we chose the walls to paint, and to our surprise, it was painted! It was a whole new feel with the bright orange paint. Then, we hung up a bunch of posters everywhere to add more color and update the place (though I kept a few posters for myself because I had to have them). I´m pretty pleased with the way it turned out. In our remaining weeks of volunteering, we have to prepare a methodoly of everything we´ve done so that future volunteers can read it and figure out what they´re supposed to do, and we´re going to talk to the new patients that come in about things that can be done for them at the clinic and any questions or advice they have for us. Volunteering has definitely been one of the best experiences I´ve had here.

On Wednesday I celebrated the first of two birthdays this week. Carlos, my host dad, turned 63! I didn´t know what to get him, so my host mom suggested that I buy his cake, which was a great idea because I love that cake too. The family and some of Carlos´s friends came over in the night, and we just ate pasta that Carla made and cake, talked, and drank. Carla´s 29th birthday was on Thursday, but she decided to have her party Saturday night so that more of her friends could come. I gave her a big boquet of sunflowers and a puzzle that Mom and Dad had mailed me, though I wrapped it up pretty (Mom said this was stingy, but I thought it was resourceful because puzzles are her thing). I was looking forward to the party, but it started really late and it turned out to be more of a friend thing and less of a family thing (my host parents didn´t even go downstairs to join the party). It was pretty awkward because I only knew Carla and maybe one other person, so I stayed a bit a politely excused myself to go out with my friends even though I didn´t even want to go out (luckily we just went for ice cream and I snuck back in the house unnoticed). In other family-related events, Mirza taught me how to cook one of my favorite Peruvian dishes, arroz con pollo. I like to think I´ll be able to make it when I go back to the US, but Mirza doesn´t use any recipes or measurements so I sort of just got a general idea, and besides, nobody cooks like Mirza. Also, a new nephew named Julio arrived from Colombia to visit for the Christmas holidays, which is more like 3 months because it´s the Peruvian summer vacation. He´s really nice, but in combination with Gabriel they just get wild (I don´t think they went to bed until after midnight the first time he got here), and my house got a lot crazier.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. They don´t celebrate it here, but we still felt compelled to do some kind of dinner and be thankful. One of my friends heard that there was a special Thanksgiving dinner at Chili´s, so a group of 9 of us went there for dinner. Unfortunately the Thanksgiving dinner was actually a turkey sandwich and some french fries, which was hugely disappointing. We spent about 45 minutes agonizing over the menu because everything was at least 30 soles! I couldn´t believe it was that expensive, like I could have eaten at the Rosa Nautica for that price, but then I did the math and realized everything was probably the same price as a Chili´s in the US, so basically I am going to be so stingy when I go home. The meal was pretty unexciting and actually nothing special (I think I´m the only one who remotely enjoyed it), but we met up with more friends afterwards at my favorite club, and just being in a group with people I really enjoy made the night fine for me.

Friday was the goodbye dinner for my exchange program. ¡Qué triste! We went to a really nice pizzaria with our program directors. First we had to fill out surveys about our host families, then we filled out another sheet (this was my idea) of our favorite things, the best micros, highlights from our trips, etc. for the people that stay in our houses next semester, which is going to be so useful. Then, another idea I had, we read e-mails that people wrote to each other before the semester started. I used to sit around and make fun of them with my parents and be concerned that I wouldn´t have any friends in my program since they were so corney, but reading them now was so funny because they do reflect people´s personalities in a way. Finally we shared our favorite memories in the program, and I talked about my 21st birthday and how nice it was to have people to share it with and make it fun even though it´s not what I wanted. Then to finish off the night, a big group of us went to the all-you-can-drink for 10 soles bar. We met up with some other people, I think there were probably about 30 of us in total, and it was so fun just to be with everyone I like and a perfect ay to end the goodbye dinner.

Sunday, not surprisingly, I spent studying. But, my Peruvian friend Jimena invited me to her house to study, which was great for me to escape the kids in my house. Her Mom offered to cook lunch, and her parents were so hospitable I couldn´t even believe it. They told me they would be my Peruvian aunt and uncle, and they said I was welcomed to stay with them any time I want. We had palta rellena (avocado filled with chicken), a Peruvian desert, the best chica morada I´ve ever had, and arroz con pato (rice with duck). The arroz con pato was supposed to be a special surprise for me (one time I told Jimena arroz con chicken was my favorite, and she was like you think that´s good you should try arroz con duck, and I just nodded and smiled, we weren´t going to a restaurant any time soon). I ate the duck, the outside was way too chewy but the inside was fine, except I promptly got sick, but hopefully I was subtle about it. We spent the rest of the evening studying for our International Political Economy exam, which is going to be really hard bcause we didn´t even have a midterm, the professor presents the material so disorganizedly (and I cannot read his hand-writing), and it´s a 24 hour take-home. I feel much better prepared, but I still have more work to do. I left pretty late at night, and right before I left, Jimena invited me to her graduation from our university! I´m definitely going to go because it´s so nice she invited me, and it will be so cool to see the graduation.

my new haircut

So, you may or may not have noticed in my previous blog that I got a new haircut! I was super nervous about it because Lorraine has been cutting my hair since I was 5 so I don´t really trust anyone else, and I was nervous about expressing my explicit preferences in Spanish. One of my best Peruvian friends Jimena offered to take me to a place she knows and helped me explain, so we went last Tuesday and then got a delicious lunch. The place she took me too was so nice- it was in one of the nicest districts in Lima (a little farther out of downtown than my district) and it was owned by the host of the Peruvian version of Dancing with the Stars. I am really happy with my hair, and I have 12 inches to donate (I think that much, I measured it in comparison to a piece of paper since they used centimeters here). I´m proud of myself for wanting to do this and letting it grow so long, but I was so done with the high maintainance of it, and I took a picture right before for a comparison.

I am not the only one that got a haircut last week. When I came back from my trip, my host dog Popea looked like a rat. Her whole body and legs are all shaved. Everything is completely hairless except her head and the tip of her tail, and she looks worse than the Peruvian hairless dogs. My family told me it was because of her skin allergy. Some of my Peruvian friends came over to work on a project yesterday, and they laughed at her! They said it´s popular for people to give their dogs this kind of haircut for the summer, but it´s really terrible. I am going to try to sneak a picture tomorrow.

Right now, I am so overwhelmed with school work and doing everything I can to procrastinate. Last week I had a presentation on my final paper for my Realidad Social Peruana class, my final paper due for my International Political Economy class, and a test for my State and Politics of the US class. This week is our last week of classes, which I can´t even believe! I´ve been working really hard on a group presentation and paper for my State and Politics class, and we have a meeting from 12-6 tomorrow! It´s so much work. They told me to write part of the introduction (in addition to my part) justifying our theme, which should be easy, but I actually don´t even know why we picked that the countries we picked to analyze. Next week I have 3 finals, so I´ll probably be studying all weekend, and by studying I mean I´ll probably think of better things to do and opt to knock off things from my things-I-still-have-to-do-in-Lima list. It´s getting really hard to manage everything.

Today I retrieved a package Mom and Dad sent me. For some reason it didn´t make it through customs, so I had to go to the post office to pick it up myself. Two other boys in my program had packages to pick up, so we all went together, which was good because this district was like the hood of Lima. We got there and waited on a line to register, then waited on a line to sign something, then waited on a line to give the piece of paper we signed and get another paper, then got a number and waited for the number to be called to give them all of our papers, then we waited for our names to be called, then we got all the papers back and waited on a line to pay, then we waited on one more line to pick up the package, which at some point in the process we had watched the inspectors open and answer questions about. The whole process took about 2 hours, not including the hour and a half it took to get back home from this district. Luckily, I only had to pay 1 sol, but my friend Daniel got stuck paying 10 soles (and he was taken into a small room and asked about his package, which contained honey buns and Doritos from his grandmother, for a period of time) and his change purse got stolen out of his pocket. I´m not sure if it was worth it for a magazine, a puzzle, and a pill container, but I guess it was an experience and the whole process kind of exemplified Perú for me.

APEC

This weekend (beginning Thursday) was APEC, which stands for Asia and Pacific Economic Conference (I think). APEC was a long anticipated event in Lima, mostly because they were doing construction in preparation since before I even arrived (now that that construction is all completed or at least cleared out of the way to look like it has been completed, my comute to school is significantly shorter). But, so many roads were closed for the weekend that traffic was a complete nightmare, like 100 times worse than usual, that I was so glad to get out of Lima. Luckily, we were off from school for 2 days and lots of people travel- my host pops explained that they reduce ticket prices and encourage people to travel for security issues (less people, less security needed) and because there have never been so many presidents people want to kill meeting in one place at one time. I saw on the news that the conference went well and that leaders made positive economic promises for the future, in a shocking twist of events. This picture of the government building in the Plaza de Armas displays the flags of all the countries represented in the conference.

My APEC began on Wednesday after my classes. I planned to fly to Chiclayo to meet up with my friends who had already been traveling throughout northern Perú since last Friday and missed Monday through Wednesday of classes, which I could not do. However, I just about missed my flight! I planned to leave about the same time I usually do for flights, but I decided to take this CIEE survey which supposedly took 10-15 minutes but was more like 30-45 minutes, which made me late and then the traffic was so bad. I got to the airport with 18 minutes before my flight, and the lines were terrible! I cut the security line, I cut the airport tax line, I checked my baggage at the gate, and booked it on to the airplane with 2 minutes to spare. The flight was pretty quick, and LAN got new snacks, which was a pretty big highlight. I landed and met my friends at their hostal, which unfortunately they had to check out of earlier, so they were sort of homeless and doing a puzzle they bought at Plaza Vea because they reported Chiclayo was sort of boring.

At 10:45pm we went to the bus station, which was a bus line called Linea (Cruz del Sur unfortunately does not run between Chiclayo and Cajamarca, so needless to say our bus ride did not involve any Bingo games). The guidebooks we had reported the trip should be about 6 hours, and my host family said it would be even less, so when I watched the sun rise on the bus, I was a little surprised. We fell asleep to the Interpreter and they served these foot-long sausage sandwiches that made me want to barf. 10+ bumpy hours later, we arrived in Cajamarca, where I actually did barf due to motion sickness. Our hostal wouldn´t let us check in, so we camped out on the couches until they decided to prepare our rooms. After lunch, we went on a tour. We first went to the ventanillas (which means "little windows") and they were like the second graves for the bones and whatever was left of bodies post-decaying for a pre-Inca civilization. Our tour also included a trip to a river where some ritual is commonly preformed (though I only saw people bathing), an hacienda (sort of like a big plantation) where they sold a lot of artisan products and we tried Cajamarcan alcoholic chicha (it was pretty gross), and a cheese factory because apparently Cajamarca is the dairy region of Perú. We got to see how they make cheese and manjar blanco (the Peruvian carmel-like desert I love so much) and try lots of delicious samples.

The next morning in Chiclayo we went to the Inca baths. They´re natural hot springs where the Incas actually bathed and relaxed. When we got there, there were lots of options for buying things that we didn´t understand. We saw a bunch of thermal baths that were too hot for anyone to go into- there was lots of steam and some of the rocks were actually boiling. We also saw the bath that the last Inca ruler and his friends bathed in, but we couldn`t go in that either (and it was pretty ugly). We later realized the baths were in private rooms and you had to wait for him, but one of the managers decided we shouldn´t wait and took us to some other baths, but actually they were bath tubs. The hot springs in Arequipa were a little disappointing compared to the ones I visited a long time ago in Costa Rica, but these were not even like a big outdoor pool, they were literally bath tubs. Our thoughts were that most people in Perú don´t have bath tubs and use these instead, and I guess it´s just cool because the Incas bathed around there, too. In the afternoon, we tried supposedly the best ice cream in northern Perú (I would have to agree), visited a church with catacumbes (Cajamarca is known for it´s churches), and went to see the cuarto del rescate, where the Spainards held the last Inca ruler. This was especially neat because as the story goes, the Inca ruler promised a room filled with gold and silver as his ransom and the line is still on the wall! Even though the wagons of gold and silver started coming into the city as he promised, the Spainards still killed him. At night, we went to see a movie, played a few games at an arcade in the mall where the movie theater was (I won 15 tickets with only 5 tokens on 3 games, I impressed myself and have renewed my interest in ski ball), got some dinner, and reboarded the bus.

The bus ride back to Chiclayo was worse than before. I took motion sickness medicine, but I decided not to take sleepy pills because I thought I could sleep on my own since I was so tired from so many exciting activities and the movie was kind of dismal. However, the guy behind me (and unfortunately sitting next to my poor friend Ashley) snored like thunder ripping down from the heavens, even worse than my Dad. Other people were snoring too, and it was kind of like this guy was playing an overkill first violin in an orchestra of snorers. At 4am when the three of us were sitll awake, Stephanie gently bopped him with a pillow, and we slept a little. Of course, we checked into our hostal and took a nap.

At 10am we took off on our tour of the señor de Sipán and the Sipán civilization. First we went to a museum and learned about the Sipáns, they were also pre-Incas, and they lived all along the northern coast of Perú from Trujillo to Piura. Then we saw the pyramids that they built- they weren´t that exquisite, but there were 23, which is a lot of pyramids in one little area. We climbed up one, which was especially funny because some women on our tour wore heels, took some pictures, and ate some lunch, which was delicious because I had macaroni and cheese for the first time outside of my house with Cajamarcan cheese. After lunch we went to one of the nicest museums I´ve ever seen and learned about the tombs of the señor de Sipán and the viejo señor de Sipán (supposedly the señor´s great grandfather, the middle generations are missing and I am wondering what they´ll name them when they find them). The señor de Sipán´s tomb was the richest tomb ever found in South America. We learned a lot about the excavation process in the museum and saw before and after restoration pictures along with most of the original things found. Then we saw both of the actual tombs and replicas of the bones that we found in them. At night, we wanted to see a movie but instead walked around the Chiclayo mall, got some ice cream, and called in an early night because our flight was at 5:55am the next day.

Now I´m back in Lima and finally feeling caught-up after a long nap. I am starting to get sad that I only have 3 weeks left here, and I´m thinking this may have been my last trip. I´m looking forward to going home, catching up with my friends and family (including showing off all 600+ photos), and being American again, but I am really goind to miss it here. I don´t have any plans for next week, but I do think I am going to make a list of things I want to do before I leave so I can start working on that.

an eventful uneventful week

Wednesday evening I attended our weekly CIEE cultural activity. We went to see a Peruvian movie in the movie theater with Melvin who had really interesting input since he is a film professor. The movie was about a wealthy family that lived in the most gorgeous house I had ever seen on a beach supposedly an hour or so outside of Lima. The father in the movie had a girlfriend who was a gold-digger / social climber that had to rehearse in the mirror before spending time with their friends. The daughter was like a Peruvian Paris Hilton who gets knocked-up, sent to Miami to have the baby, and has to pretend the baby belongs to the girlfriend. The son is a big creeper who is in love with his sister and is an uninterested intern at his father´s company. The last scene of the movie shows a bunch of empleadas or live-in house keepers raising babies, including the baby that the daughter / girlfriend had. It was a strange plotline, but I think it offered some interesting social commentary.

Thursday (we went on Thursday for just this week instead of the usual Wednesday) was our last presentation with Flora Tristán to our high school students. Wednesday afternoon we spent at least 4 hours preparing an epic game of jeopardy with all the information we´ve taught and assembling prizes with candy, condoms, feminine hygenie products, pens and pencils, little facts, sticky notes, and all sorts of other goodies for our students. Thursday we left Spanish class a little early, which was fine because Rocio is always understanding and Stephanie and I were the only people that showed up again, so we were just catching up with her. The students took the Jeopardy game way, way too seriously, and the classroom was pretty loud and chaotic, but they knew most of the answers to the questions, which means we taught them well and they paid attention. They loved the prizes (though they said the best prize was our time with them), and Lourdres (the director of the clinic) brought special sandwiches and cookies that they also enjoyed. We gave them our e-mail addresses, started saying goodbye, and then some of the boys awkwardly began taking out their cell phones and asking for pictures with us. We ended up staying to hang out for a while, which mostly consisted of taking more pictures and playing a game of volley ball with a really painful ball. I´m going to miss them a lot, but it was the perfect ending, and we´re starting at a new school sometime soon.

This weekend was my host-nephew´s 6th birthday. On Friday night, which was his actual birthday, we had the family party at my host-family´s house. I came home from a shopping spree at Polvos Azules about an hour before the party, and realized everyone was dressed up, so I had to put together a nice outfit as quickly as possible. Still, the party was really nice- we had little sandwiches and other picky food, sang Happy Birthday, watched Gabo open his presents, and mostly just talked. I gave Gabriel a Memory game with Spiderman and other superhero characters, and he loved it- we played twice that night, and not surprisingly, I lost both times. He gave me the candle from his cake and told me his wished I could stay forever (and that I would give him my laptop). This afternoon Gabriel had his party for his friends at McDonald´s. I mostly hung out with my host-family (minus Carlos who went to the movie theater next door instead) because the kids were crazy. They had a little party room with a señorita who hosted the party, and I felt so bad for her because I know they´re not paying her enough- it was 10 times worse than anything I did at Build-a-Bear (she made them dance to songs that incorporated the ba-da-da-da-da I´m loving it slogan, played a bunch of weird games, and wore the ugliest red and yellow outfit I´ve ever seen). There was a ton of extra food and chicken nuggets kept appearing out of no where, but I think Gabriel really enjoyed himself. And, Carla, Constanza, Mirza, and I got to watch him open all of his presents at the house afterwards. He really loves presents.

Saturday afternoon my friend Gali convinced me to go with him to this end-of-semester BBQ party for Ciencias Sociales, which is the department we take classes in at our university. He really wanted to go to see a girl that told him to come, and I went because most of my friends are out of Lima this weekend so I seized the opportunity to do something. The directions were really bad, and we ended up having to walk a lot down Javier Prado, which is basically like a highway, jump a median, cross 2 bridges, and make about 10 phone calls to people already there. Part of the problem was that it was a house (and we were looking for a restaurant or something), but it was the nicest house I´ve seen in Perú. It was so awkward when we first arrived because there were only 2 other exchange students there, and I recognized a few people from my classes but for the most part they weren´t the classmates I´m particularly friendly with. I decided the awkwardness warranted a beer, then all of a sudden I was asked to judge a dance competition and I´m being introduced as the token exchange student to the entire party. I judged a dance competition with 2 professors, and it was kind of fun, though I felt pretty unqualified. Afterwards, it was still awkward, so I said my goodbyes and left, though I think I made some friends (or aquaintances at least) in the process.

I went out to two new places this weekend. On Thursday I went to a club with Ashley and Stephanie before they took off on their 4:20am flight and Gali to a club in the mall, next to my favorite club. We were on some sort of list, and we had to wait on a line forever (probably like 10-15 minutes) even though we begged the bouncer to let us in with especially thick American accents. I ended up running into someone from one of my classes (and one of Ashley´s classes) who professed his love for Ashley and somehow did not realize she has a boyfriend of 3 years who has already visited Lima twice. The club played one really good stint of American music, but other than that it (and I for the next 2 days) smelled like an overflowing ashtray possibly with beer spillage and too much cologne. On Saturday night I went with some girls from the Holy Cross program to a club called Drama that´s supposed to be really popular. Again, we were on some sort of list, but still had to wait on an epic line. The club was really cool because it was on the beach, so you could walk outside and look out on the ocean and walk on the sand. The dancefloor was also cool because it was round, but it was so cramped and the music was pretty terrible, so I didn´t stay there too long either. I think I miss the lodges.

road trip

This weekend I took a road trip with my friend Stephanie via bus through southern Perú. My first stop was a city called Paracas about 4 hours away from Lima. We checked into our hostal in the neighboring town of Pisco, which we thought connected to Paracas but was actually an unnecessary 20 minutes and 15 soles in a cab away. We ate dinner in Pisco´s most well-known restaurant called As de Oro, and the next day we got up early to do a tour of the Paracas Peninsula and the Islas Ballestas. The Paracas Peninsula looks basically like dessert but is the home to the Paracas National Reserve and a mysterious figure carved in the sand called the Candleabra. The Islas are a series of rocky islands covered in all sorts of birds (normal birds, pelicans, penguins, flamingoes, and sometimes condors), sea lions, crabs, star fish, and all sorts of other life. They´re also where guano (bird poop) is harvested, which is Peru´s biggest export because it´s such a good fertilizer. Unfortunately after the tour, there wasn´t much to do in Paracas or Pisco so we had to sit around until our bus arrived.

We arrived around 5pm in our next city, Ica. Something really interesting I noticed about this trip was that people started gravitating to us- asking us questions about our experiences and asking us for help. At the bus station, some women asked us to help them talk to the bus station attendants about the arrival and departure times on their trip, and on the bus going to Ica someone leaned over and said he read that Ica was the 2nd most dangerous city in Perú, and my response was "It´s ok, we live in Lima" and he asked us to help him get a cab. We actually stayed outside of Ica, which was definitely a good deciscion because there is nothing we actually wanted to do IN Ica and the town of Huacachina is a lot prettier. We ate dinner that night at a restaurant overlooking the lagoon around which the town is constructed. The picture below is a view of the lagoon that we took while touring the sand dunes that surround it.


The next day we woke up to do a tour of bodegas, which is where Peruvians make wine and pisco. The first bodega we went to was called Tacama, which is one of the most famous Peruvian brands (my Mom likes it a lot). We walked the fields of grapes and saw them in all their different phases of growth, then tasted about 5 different wines and 2 piscos. The next bodega we went to was called El Catador, which is equally well-known and oversees the famous pisco brand Tres Generaciones. There we toured the grape-squishing, juice-acquiring and fertilization processes they use to make the wine and pisco and sampled more wine and more pisco. I started to get concerned that I would get too tispy from wine-tasting to do my afternoon activities, so we elected to go to the Parque de la Bruja instead, which is a park and museum dedicated to "The witch with the big butt;" legend has it that although she was considered ugly because of her huge butt, it is now good luck to rub this witch´s butt Tuesdays and Fridays while applying perfume.

In the afternoon, we did a tour of the sand dunes that surround Ica and Huacachina. We took a dune buggy that went so fast up and down the dunes. Then we got to try sandboarding! At first, I was scared because the dunes seemed really steep, but it was SO fun!! I went down sitting and on my stomach instead of actually riding it like a snowboard, but it was still so cool. Afterwards, I felt so sandy, I was brushing sand out of my eyebrows, fingernails, socks, and everywhere you can imagine. We went for a swim in our hostal´s pool, showered, and caught the bus to our 3rd and final destination.

Saturday night, after 2 hours on the bus, we arrived in Nazca. The bus station was a little overwhelming because so many tour agencies and hotels came, but the staff from our hostal kindly came to pick us up. We were pretty tired from the day and knew that the next day would be equally tiring, so we made it an early night. I got up early to go on a flight over the Nazca lines, which is the best way to see them- they´re a cluster of drawings (a spider, hummingbird, hands, condor, tree, dog, monkey, astronaut, and other shapes) in the middle of the dessert with no explanation. The plane was so tiny (6 people, including the pilot) and made a lot of circles and dips so we could get a good view. Even though I felt a little woozy by the end, it was amazing. Stephanie was too scared to take the plane and went to a 5-story mirador from which you can see 2 of the lines (though not as well as you can from the plane). Afterwards, we went on a tour of the Cemeterio Cauchilla, which is 30km outside of Nazca, and 12 of those are unpaved. Someone discovered 17 tombs in the middle of the dessert with incredibly well-preserved mummies. Though tomb-robbers took a lot of stuff, I was still amazed at the condition of the tombs and mummies. Our tour included a stop at a pottery workshop where we saw the process the Incas used to make pottery and a mining workshop where we saw how people make gold and mine other precious gems.

We arrived back in Lima Sunday around midnight. The highlight of the return was playing Bingo on the bus! Even though we lost a bottle of pisco to Joe from Texas who didn´t even speak Spanish, it was fun. Also, we saw halfway decent movies on the way home, which was such a plesant change from the terrible, terrible movies we watched on the previous buses (one called A Lot Like Love that I would highly discouraging watching ever and one about Bill Gates and the Apple computer guy). I´m still pretty exhausted and recovering from the trip, but I´m so glad I got to do so many neat things in one weekend.