Mexican food, mountain view, and peruvian parade craziness!

First of all, I have been meaning to give you all a little summary of my host family so that you are all clear who everyone is because I am planning on just using their names from now on when I write, so if you forget who someone is you can just reference this:

Abraham = host father

Rosa = host mother

Blanca = host sister, 30 years old

Juanka = Blanca's husband

Evelyn = host sister, 28 years old

Joe = Evelyn's husband; he works in the jungle for two weeks and then lives here for two weeks (his name sounds like yo-eh. . . i'm not very good at phonetic spellings)

Diego = Evelyn and Joe's son, 2 years old in October

Valentina = Blanca and Juanka's daughter, just turned 1

Augusto = host cousin who lives on the third floor

Mayra = Augusto's girlfriend (she doesn't live here but she sometimes hangs out)

Teo = "maid"; basically every family of means here has a maid that lives in the house and performs basic duties such as cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and caring for the children. The maid is like a part of the family.

Mary = Teo's sister who lives here and works as security in a casino.

Ok, now that we have that settled, I can tell you about my week/weekend.  My week actually was not too exciting. . . mostly just a lot of class.  I did go to Starbucks here for the first time and it was a strange experience because it just doesn't seem to fit here in Peru.  There are actually a lot of Starbucks in Lima, but really you can find good coffee much cheaper elsewhere. On Thursday I went to a youth group of sorts at the University and all the students there were very friendly and welcoming.  I liked it, but I was super tired and almost fell asleep . . . oops.  Thursday was not a good day for my host family because they received the news that a relative passed away.  I think she was Rosa's brother's wife (Coco), although I am not sure.  I guess she suffered from cardiac arrest and died suddenly.  Both Rosa and Abraham were very upset because Coco was Rosa's best friend.  My family was gone a lot Thursday, Friday and Saturday attending the funeral and cremation, and when they were home everyone was a little bit tense; even the babies seemed to be crying more.

Friday night I met up with my friends Laura, Sydney, Kevin, Megan and Sarah at a restaurant in San Isidro called Como Agua Para Chocolate.  The restaurant is recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook, although it serves Mexican and not Peruvian food.  I ordered an enchilada and thoroughly enjoyed it because I had been missing Mexican food since I eat it quite frequently at home. After dinner, we walked to a cultural center nearby to see a play called "Fando y Lis." It was quite the interesting play; it only had five actors and lasted only and hour and fifteen minutes, but it was really intense.  The story was about a paraplegic girl (Lis) and her boyfriend (Fando) who were trying to reach a place called Tar, where their dreams would come true.  However, they could never reach it and always ended up back where they started.  One moment Fando would act innocent and childish and the next minute he would get angry and hit Lis.  In addition there were three men who were also trying to reach Tar and they traveled together with a huge umbrella and argued about whether it's more important to know where the wind is coming from or where it is going.  I think the play was supposed to be very thought-provoking, but I felt like I was missing some background information.  Thankfully I was at least able to understand the Spanish :-)  After the play, Laura, Sarah, and I went to Parque Kennedy in search of hot chocolate.  We were walking past a chess tournament when a lady approached us to tell us that she worked at a new restaurant nearby and we should come check it out.  So we went to this lounge/bar called the Jardín Secreto (Secret Garden), which was indeed rather secret because it was hidden behind another building.  There was live music which was sweet, although we were sitting much too close to it for my sensitive ears.  The hot chocolate was awful, but we enjoyed each other's company and were excited to find someplace new.

Saturday morning my family was gone at the cremation, so I ate breakfast with Mary and we chatted for awhile.  Mary and Teo are from the north, but Mary has been living in Lima for around 11 years.  She spent two years in the military service and is currently living here with Teo, although she prefers living on her own.  Previously I had told Mary that I didn't have any "música bailable" which means music to dance to, so she gave me a whole bunch of music on her flash drive.  I am most excited because I really like Peruvian music and now I have some!  Dance party anyone?  In the afternoon I met up with Sydney and Laura at the University, along with two "compañeros PUCP."  The compañeros are university students who have basically volunteered to be friends with us foreign students.  Juanka always jokes that the compañeros really just want American girlfriends for a semester, which may actually be true about some of them.  Anyhow, Laura, Sydney, Dante, Emanuel and I went to a restaurant near PUCP to get lunch because I was hungry and then we took a taxi to the center of Lima.
The taxi ride was rather squished since four of us had to squish in the back which is really only meant for three, but we just laughed a lot.  When we got to the center, we bought tickets to take a tour bus up to the top of Cerro San Cristóbal which I would describe as a small mountain.  The view from the top was pretty amazing!  As I think I have mentioned before, Lima is ENORMOUS, and even though I knew it was huge, it was still surprising to see just how spread out the city is.  After the tour, we went to a little food festival to eat picarrones and watch some Michael Jackson impersonators, including 7 or 8 year old boy who was hilarious.  When I got home my family was back, but Evelyn and Blanca were taking Diego and Valentina to a birthday party so they left right away.  They invited me to go but I was tired from the day's adventures so I stayed back to watch the Argentina v. Brasil soccer game with Juanka.  Quite an enjoyable day overall.

Dante, me, Sydney, Laura, Emanuel

Yes, I am stilly smiley even though the sky is cloudy and grey like this every day!

Yesterday (Sunday) I went out with my family, and as usual the place I thought we were going was not actually our first stop.  First we drove on the highway along the ocean just for the view and we stopped at this one spot for the "salto del fraile," which means the friar's jump.  Basically, a person dressed as a friar dives off a giant rock formation into the ocean.  After that we drove to a club that Abraham is a member of for lunch.  I had bisteck a lo pobre, which is a piece of beef served with rice, fried bananas, french fries and a fried egg.  While those flavors may not sound good all mixed together, I like all of them separately so it was a very tasty meal. After lunch, we finally made our way to the destination I had been expecting at the beginning of the trip, the Gran Corso Wong.  This a a huge event in Miraflores with a super long parade and crowds of people turn out to enjoy it.  Generally I do not like parades but I did enjoy this one because it was different from the parades I usually see (Glen Ellyn 4th of July) and it included groups of dancers performing traditional dances from various regions of Peru.  However, after two hours of standing sandwiched in a crowd of people I was ready to hit the road, and yet we stayed for another hour.  My back was killing me and I was so thirsty, but I am glad that I experienced this crazy event.  Pictures of the parade to come.  Also, here are the public links to my pictures on facebook if you want to see more than the ones I've put in my blog.  You don't have to have a facebook to look at the pictures with these links:
The birthday party!
My first two weeks in Lima