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.

Mancora, Halloween, and a soccer game

Again, it´s been a really, really long time since I´ve written! I realized I only have 3 entries for the entire month of October, so I´m going to have to rededicate myself to keeping up my blog for the rest of the time here. My parents´trip was completed with a 5-day stay in Mancora, a tiny beach town in Northern Peru. I had a full day on Wednesday with classes and volunteering, so I didn´t see them until the airport, which I arrived at directly from my volunteer job. During the day, my parents packed up their things and had lunch with my host parents at their country club. Once we arrived in Piura, we learned the cab ride to Mancora was another 2.5 hours! It was late at night and after a long day, I just wanted to sleep, but the roads were so windy and bumpy that I was forced to stay awake. Luckily, the beach was absolutely beautiful, and we all really enjoyed our time there. The actual town of Mancora was kind of pretty run-down and a little sketchy, so we spent most of our time just relaxing on the beach- I read 2 books and 4 US Weekly magazines. We flew back to Lima Sunday afternoon and spent the of the day relaxing at my host family´s house and eating pizza after a crisis where my luggage was missing (it turns out some 83-year-old lady mistook it for her luggage, which looked nothing like mine). Then, my parents had to go back to the airport to fly home.

The week was pretty busy but not out of the ordinary. On Monday after 2 classes, we tried to book some upcoming trips, but the travel agencies were very unhelpful and since we have made no progress on planning. Instead, we went costume shopping for Halloween, and I tried on so many weird costumes from a greek goddess with a full-length red cape to a flamenco dancer. In the end, we didn´t get anything and instead watched the Phillies game in the American bar where we watched all the presidential debates, but that was unsuccessful too as it got rained out. Wednesday we returned to give another presentation for our volunteer job, and we were asked a plethora of questions about mono, Christmas, and whether we have black people in the US. They also informed us that the principal of the school has a crush on Stephanie and their teacher like me, but I think it´s a cover up because the 14-year-old boys are the ones that truly love us. On Thursday I had my wellness interview with Marion, our program director, and we ended up talking for an hour and 1/2, and basically all I had to say was that I was well. Stephanie and I enjoyed our usual Thursday chifa lunch with Rocio, and I learned that peeling from the sun (which I am doing massively on my shoulders and chest as a result of Mancora) is actually really beautiful and sexy here, while I still maintain that it is digusting. How crazy! In the evening we went on a tour of a cemetery (we didn´t actually know what we were getting into, but it´s a typical Peruvian activity this particular weekend)- we saw all the famous Peruvian´s tombs, but the whole experience was kind of creepy, so we left early by taxi.

This weekend we celebrated Halloween! Even though it´s not as popular here and they actually celebrate another holiday on the same day called Canción de la Criolla, we still made it happen. Friday afternoon, I went trick-or-treating with my host nephew, Mirza, and Stephanie, which mostly consisted of us going to Plaza Vea; the funny thing is they don´t say trick-or-treat, instead they yell "Halloween!" At night, I took it upon myself to throw a Halloween party because the only Halloween parties here are specials at casions and 60 sole parties where people don´t dress up (nothing like Richmond!). I rented our the second floor of a really posh-looking Arabic restaurant slash hookah bar that we´ve been to several times, and we worked really hard to invite everyone we know in Lima throughout the week. It was so successful! I packed the place to capacity and had to turn some people away (luckily they were friends or friends, so I didn´t feel too bad), and I made back almost all of the money I spent to rent to place and on decorations and candy. The best part of the night was my costume- after much consideration, Stephanie, Ashley, and I rented full-body cat suits. Also, Stephanie and I got very elaborate face paint at Plaza Vea, though we had to buy Huggies products to do it, but it was thus the most all-out costume I´ve ever had. The only downside of the night was that somebody managed to steal my ipod, which provided the music for the party, and it stinks that something like that had to ruin such a good night. I´m hoping the insurance I have on it pulls through, but I´m not optimistic because as my Dad pointed out, the Best Buy insurance did not pull through for my camera last semester.

Last night I went to my first Peruvian fútbol a.k.a soccer game! It began at 6pm, but we had to arrive by 5pm to get good seats since there is no assigned seating. The stadium is in a really nice district, but the games are supposed to be pretty dangerous because of barras, which are groups (some official, some unofficial) of young guys that staunchy support a soccer team. Stephanie and I arrived early and saw the barras (though some seemed pretty unintimidating), so we waiting safely behind a baracade of 10 police officers for the rest of our group to arrive. The game was between a team from Cusco and a team called Universitaria, which is the second oldest team in Lima and has notoriously dedicated and violent followers. Watching the fans was more exciting than watching the game (which was a tie in the end), but it was nothing like any American sport I´ve seen. There were drums and flares and flags and cheers literally throughout the entire game, and we could see people bouncing constantly in the other sections; the only time these people sat down was during the break at half-time. When we left it took us forever to get a cab and we paid double what we paid to get there, which must be the result of everyone taking public transportation to a single stadium, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience.