I believe I left off in the middle of describing my birthday! Sooo Tuesday night people came over and my host aunt made pollo con piña, which means chicken with pineapple. It was a chinese dish that had pineapple and pead pods and peppers and sesame seeds and it was sooooo delicious. I had never had it before, so I didn't realize it was chinese food until I walked in the kitchen while it was cooking and saw a big pot with pea pods in it. Generally I don't love chinese food, but I ended up eating my plate of food and finishing my friend's and eating leftovers for lunch the next day :-) Speaking of leftovers, that is something I miss from the U.S. My mom always makes food in large quantities and then I can just heat some up every day for lunch. Peruvians do no eat leftovers very much. They try to make the right amount of food so it will all be gone at the end of the day. And if there are leftovers, my host sisters will take it with them to work, but we never eat leftovers as the meal of the day - they always make something new. I feel like one reason I like leftovers is that if I really like a food, I don't feel like I have to stuff myself because I know I can eat it the next day. Here, however, I feel like I have to eat as much as possible in one meal because I may not have that food again for another two weeks or more! Ok, sorry for this super long analysis of leftovers. Back to the party. Soooo, my host family had this ceremony for my 4-month-old host-niece during the party. The baby's god-parents put some "holy" water on her head using some leaves and then everyone said the Our Father and Hail Mary. This is supposedly some sort of Catholic tradition which seemed to me like a homemade version of baptism, but I guess the baptism in a church comes later? In any case, they made me hold the candle because I am single and "pure" (virgin)...my host mom joking said, "Catalina is thinking, 'how do they know I'm a virgin?'" I found the whole ceremony rather amusing. Since I don't like cake, we had cheesecake instead and after everyone sang to me, they expected me to give a little speech, which I did NOT know I was going to have to do. Thank goodness my birthday was this semester and not last semester because I last semester I would have freaked out if I had to spontaneously speak Spanish in front of such a large crowd of people!
AFter cake, my friends and I played teledraw, which if you have never played is combo of telephone and pictionary. Possibly one of the funniest games of teledraw I have ever played. And I cannot tell you how many times I appeared in people's phrases and drawings...I guess when it is your birthday everyone is thinking about you? Haha. This picture on the left is one of the stories created. Oh wait, I suppose I should translate for those of you who don't speak Spanish. The first phrase was "el muñeco de nieve murió de frío" which means "the snowman died of cold" but muñeco means doll in Spanish, so my friend didn't realize that muñeco de nieve was a snowman when she drew the first picture. The second phrase says "it's raining on a clown." 3) a clown is standing in the rain 4) the magic guinea pig that lends money 5) the apocalypse 6) we're all going to celebrate Caitlyn's birthday! 7) Caitlyn has many friends . . . what started as a snowman ended up as me having many friends. Basically, I laughed an awful lot playing this game! Anyhow, I have to get back to my history homework because I have a reading quiz coming up this Thursday, but stay tuned for more stories from Lima :-)
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