Holy guacamole! May is halfway over already! Which also means my birthday is in two weeks! I don't know what I'm going to do for it yet, but my host family brings it up almost every day, so I figure it won't be boring.... plus my package already arrived from my mommy so I have something to open when the day arrives :-D A ver (Let's see), what has been happening since I last wrote in here. Exams are over which means I feel more relaxed. And of the two I have gotten back I did very well, which is great relief. Let's go back to last weekend (May 6-9). Thursday night I did absolutely nothing. After my history exam I pretty much slept all afternoon and then skyped with my mom in the evening. Friday night I went to Laura's house to try the chocolates that her empleada (maid) was making to sell for mother's day. They were suuuuper tasty! I had one filled with manjar blanco and maracuyá (which is like dulce de leche with passion fruit...a combination that doesn't sound very good to me but in reality it tastes amazing). I bought some of the chocolates for my host mom for mother's day. Then Laura and Audrey and I went over to Amelia's house to meet up with here and Abby. There we ate cereal and peanuts and made butterscotch brownies which were super tasty. Amelia's host mom (Kika) is awesome! She is such a caring woman and she is so willing to offer her home and her food. Almost too willing (in terms of the food). We had definitely already eaten plenty with the cereal and peanuts and brownies, oh and avocado, when Kika decided that we need more food so she made tuna and tomato sandwiches, which I of course did not eat since I do not like tuna. I cannot tell you how many times Kika told "están en su casa" which means "you are in your own house." And truly I feel very at home in her house. Probably too at home...I eat a lot of fruit when I'm there because they have a whole table covered in baskets of fruit and I LOVE fruit. :-) Saturday I went to a special mother's day lunch at the club (as in a social club not a dance club) with my host family. In all honestly I was not very excited to go, but I wanted to be there since my host mom invited me and it was for Mother's Day and all, except then I had to sit at a different table than her anyhow. The "show" was a woman singing 80s music in English. The way she pronounced the word you was really awkward. And she sang a duet by herself. The food was only good because I was really hungry...I wolfed it down and even ate the cake. I don't like cake! Really, though, the exciting part of the whole luncheon was that they had a drawing and you'll never guess what I won.... I wish I could build the excitement more but it's a hard thing to do in a blog... I won a 22" LCD TV!!! What? I couldn't believe it. Who would have thought that I would win a cool TV in Peru???!!! Too bad there's no way it's making it home. My host sister and brother in law have already told me that they want to buy it from me, so that's the plan. :-) My host family kept calling me suertuda which means lucky. I guess I am pretty lucky.
Sunday was Mother's Day just like in the U.S. and it was not the best of days for me. My host family left early to go to my grandma's house so I got left behind by myself in the house. My host dad told me that we were going to eat at home so I waited and waited for them to come back, and at 3:30 Blanca came home with some turkey and rice and a really weird potato/apple/celery salad for me. It turns out she and Juanca has gone to visit Juanca's aunt and not to my grandma's house. Soon after that my host dad came home because he was sick, but my host mom went out to lunch with her siblings and mother. Blanquita and Juanca and I stopped into the restaurant where they were eating to say hi and then we went to the supermarket to buy a cake which we took back to my grandma's house and waited for everyone to come back from the restaurant. But my host mom never came because she went back to my house to be with my host dad. So basically I spent zero time with my host mom on Mother's Day which was disappointing to me since I actually didn't have any homework having just finished exams and I had intended to spend the day with my family. Oh well, I guess sometimes things don't work out as you plan. Actually things never work out like you plan in Peru. Haha. I should know that by now :-)
Last week I was back in normal classes (during midterms, classes are suspended, so you only go to your tests) and all was good. Monday was my first day at the boys' house for my volunteering. All last semester and thus far this semester I had been volunteering in the girls' house but they told me they needed more help in the boys' house, so I switched. My first impressions were that the boys are way more active than the girls; they yell and run around and roll and the floor and hit each other. It was crazy. I cannot say I really enjoyed my time there and I honestly didn't feel any more useful than in the girls' house. More about this in a minute.
Tuesday I accidentally slept through my history class because my phone died during the night so my alarm didn't go off. I didn't really feel that bad about it though. I just got up, took my time getting ready and went to study for my philosophy test at Starbucks. My philosophy test wasn't actually during midterms week...for some reason my teacher decided we should have the Thursday of the following week. When I got home from school on Tuesday I had tallarines verdes for me. Tallarines means noodles or spaghetti and verde means green aka the noodles are covered in a pesto-like sauce. My host mom had made them especially for me because I had been craving them. So I was excited.
Wednesday was my brother's birthday so I gave him a call and wished I could have been with him to give him a hug, even though he probably would have ditched me for his friends anyhow ;-)
Thursday was a really great day. After my two morning classes, I ate lunch with Sitra and Laura and then studied a bit more for my philo exam while Laura went to check her email. And then she joined me and we shared a yogurt from the little café on campus. It was really good with chunks of peaches and strawberries and granola and honey. Then these Peruvians approached us and asked if we'd be willing to be in a picture for university publicity. Unfortunately by that time I had to go to my exam so I couldn't do it, which means I missed out on making about $50. And I love being in pictures. But that's okay. Laura got to do it :-) After my exam, I walked out of my classroom to find Laura randomly sitting on a bench nearby so I sat down to chat and we just talked for a couple hours while she was waiting to go to her one hour of class from 6-7. That was probably the best part of the day. That and sharing the yogurt :-) In the evening I went to a restaurant called the Dama Juana with my program. There was a buffet and a show with all the typical dances of Peru: Tondero, Marinera, Afro-Peruano, el Alcatraz, danza de la selva, Baile de las Tijeras (Scissors Dance), Huaylas, etc. I had gone to this cultural even last semester too, but this time around I paid more attention to the dances and was please to discover that I actually already recognized the dances and knew their names.
Friday was Laura's birthday, so after a morning and afternoon of cleaning and doing my laundry, I went over to her house to have cake and play teledraw. Then we went to a restaurant called Antica for pizza and sangria. Super tasty. Antica is an awesome restaurant because it has the best pizza that I've had in Peru and it has a sweet atmosphere...really rustic and cute.
Saturday was a chill day...exercise, homework and church.
Sunday was my friend Marialuisa's birthday. She is in my small group at church so we went out to lunch with her and then went to a guy's house from the church to throw her a party of sorts. It was supposed to be a surprise for her but somehow she found out before she got there. And we had decided to make tacos for her but when we got to the house there was no gas for the oven so we had to wait for it to be delivered which delayed the cooking but eventually we had fire and I (with a little bit of help from my small group leader Neto) made ground beef tacos and fresh salsa for 18 people. I don't know if everyone else liked it but I was in heaven because I love Mexican food and I miss it so much while I'm here. Even more than pizza. I'm thinking of making salsa again sometime soon and buying some tortilla chips to eat it with. mmmmmm. Needless to say I was exhausted Sunday night when I got home but I also had a great time at the party and it felt great to have had a busy weekend.
Yesterday I went back to the boys' house for my volunteering to see if perhaps I would like it better this week than last week, but I still was not very excited about it. I think I am going to email the volunteer coordinator of the organization to see if I can go back to the girls' house. After volunteering though I got to skype with Kevin, one of my friends from last semester, which was sooooo good because I miss everyone from last semester a lot. Then I skype with my daddy and Diane. Dad just got a new macbook so now he has a webcam and he installed skype and everything. I got really really happy when the video started and I got to see them! Video chatting is such a wonderful invention. I actually don't know how I would make it through this experience without skype. It is so great for keeping in contact with my friends and family. Then my friend Mary came over to visit! I hadn't seen her in several weeks because she had been gone the past two weeks visiting her family in the north. You may remember me talking about Mary and her family last semester when I went to her brother's wedding. So basically yesterday was an awesome day.
As was today! I went to history class and then came back home because it ended early and I was freezing. It is definitely winter here. The sky is gray and it keeps doing that awful sprinkly/misty version of rain that is the only kind of rain we get in Lima and it's really obnoxious because umbrella's don't even help. At home I drank some coffee and did some reading for my class, then asked if I could take my lunch to school with my so that I could meet up with Neto and Juan (both from my small group and CBU) for lunch. After a lovely time with them, Neto and I ran into Dan and Erick on campus (two guys from CBU) so I just hung around and chatted with the two of them for awhile. We talked about video games and the upcoming world cup. And I just felt so great chilling with them because I could understand them (suprisingly...I usually have a LOT of trouble understanding Dan because he talks really fast) and plus they are great guys. In philosophy class I had a full conversation with the girl that I have been sitting next to all semester and found out her name is Claudia. It is good to finally have a semi-friend in that class. And following that I met up with my friend Alix and Crepes & Waffles! Alix has appeared in my blog before because she was living in Lima when I first arrived in July and was the one who introduced me to Crepes & Waffles. She is here visiting on her break from school. She is studying for a masters in journalism in Maryland and just finished up the semester but will soon be starting a summer session. I have been looking forward to her visit all semester and it was wonderful to see her! And after that I went home and ended up in the kitchen with two of the empleadas, Elka and Sandra who tried to teach me the typical dance of the jungle (since they are from Iquitos, a city in the jungle). We laughed a lot and I enjoyed talking with them. Sandra also cut up some watermelon for me which was soooo tasty! Then I got on the computer and I had an email from my advisor at Hope and he has some hours for me for next semester to do linguistics research with him which I am really excited about because it will entail doing some investigating of the Spanish immersion program at Zeeland Christian which I think is an awesome program. And I found out that one of my high schools' double teams placed 6th at the badminton state tournament which I was really excited about. And I discovered that my friend Syndney cut her hair. She was on my program last semester and had dreds and now her hair is really short and she has a really cute stylish hair cut! So basically today was just filled with excitement and awesomeness. Now it is bed time!!! Pictures soon to come.
Oh and btw, the title of the blog post comes from teledraw at Laura's bday party. That was the phrase I wrote, which was very random but through the series drawings and phrases it turned into "fish eat man."
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