Thanksgiving in Peru!

I was so blessed to be invited by Jessa’s family friend to their house for Thanksgiving on Thursday! They are both workers for the US government who are living in Lima and the moment we stepped in the door the atmosphere was extremely welcoming and warm. Leah and I came a little bit late because we had our last Spanish class (yay I am done with classes!) so we arrived just as the final touches were getting put together. Luis, the father of the household poured me a glass of wine and we sat down to enjoy the first course of pumpkin soup (delicious).



 Then, we ate turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce (from crate and barrel) green beans wrapped in bacon and a delicious salad. Needless to say, it was fabulous. Everything was delicious and the environment was just lovely. The family consists of Luis, Kathy and their 13 year old daughter Tori, who is mature well beyond her age and a joy to talk to. We were also joined by Kathy’s friend and her daughter who is 11, also Americans. 


For dessert, we had pumpkin roll and chocolate covered strawberries that Jessa and I prepared and apple pie and vanilla ice cream prepared by them. Also was delicious. Great conversation, such a nice family, delicious food. I could not have been more happy and feel more lucky!

I do miss my family quite a bit and am really excited to see everyone for Christmas when I get home.

Happy Holiday Season everyone!

Arequipa!

This weekend we took a little trip to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. On Wednesday evening, we boarded a cruz del sur suite bus, which had large leather seats that folded all the way down. We got served a meal that was pretty tasty (chicken and rice, surprise surprise) watched Happy Gilmore then pushed our seats back and went to sleep at around midnight. The sleep was not perfect and it was fragmented, but it was sufficient. In the morning, we were served breakfast and they showed the movie August Rush and we arrived in Arequipa around noon, 16 hours later! We took a taxi into the center of the city and found a hostel that was recommended to us. We checked in, dropped our stuff and headed out to check out the town. Arequipa is a beautiful city. It was very sunny and warm. All the buildings are beautiful. The city is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that can be seen from almost anywhere, and there is a beautiful river streaming just a few blocks away from the plaza de armas. The cathedral and plaza are the most beautiful I have seen in Peru. The plaza has a lot of greenery and the façade of the cathedral was just beautiful. I took a million and one pictures.

The four of us traveling were me, Leah, Jessa and Zach and we met up with our half Peruvian and half Swiss friend Jorge who is also studying abroad in Lima at Zach’s university for most of our time in Arequipa. Jorge gave us a little feel of the nightlife but we still ended up headin to bed fairly early.

Friday

We got up the next morning to go rafting! We were all a little nervous and not sure what to expect, but at the end of the trip, we all concluded that it was easily our favorite thing we did in Arequipa! It was a ton of fun, and a lot less frightening than I thought. Our guide really knew his stuff and I was never worried once we started going down river. We also got out and got to jump into the river from the top of this giant rock. That was quite scary, but once I jumped, I just wanted to keep jumping! He let me and leah go twice, but then we had to continue the rafting! Once we finished and got home and showered and rested up a bit, we went grocery shopping to buy ingredients to cook some traditional Arequipena food! Lucky for us, Jorge is an awesome host, and invited us to his home to make rocoto relleno, papas en ocopa sauce and cheese fondue (which really is his Switzerland half coming out but we enjoyed it anyways!) His aunt, uncle and cousin joined us for dinner and helped us realize that our rocoto relleno was far too spicy, but I think the experience was still a ton of fun for everyone!

Saturday

The next day I got to visit the cathedral. Inside was nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary besides the beautiful organ. During the tour, I learned that this cathedral has been damaged by three major earthquakes and one major fire. That was enough of an explication to me why it was a little more simple inside! There were a few little museum rooms as well that had some really beautiful artifacts from the cathedral. The museum rooms, the organ and the view from the roof of the cathedral were plenty to make this my favorite cathedral visit in Peru!

That afternoon, Jorge took me to eat at his favorite traditional restaurant while the others wanted some down time and we ate chupe de camarones (soup with crawfish) and rocoto relleno (because the ones we cooked were basically inedible) and of course, we had a pisco sour. The meal was delicious and it was great to get to talk to Jorge some more. He is a pretty interesting guy and makes all of us feel bad about ourselves with his multi-language abilities!

Sunday

We decided we wanted to take advantage of all the sunshine, so the girls headed to the pool. Jorge got us into the club where his family had membership, and we spent a few hours reading and talking and lounging in the sunshine.

We had a splendid lunch, spent some more time exploring the city then headed to the train station around 7pm to head home for another along nighttime bus ride!

I am running out of weekends in Peru…

Friday was a successful day. Worked at the hospital in the morning and worked in Medicina, which is one of my favorites now, mostly just because I have worked there a lot and am really close with a lot of the kids. We worked on writing thank you notes to another group of women who do volunteer work at the hospitals. I believe they deliver meals and diapers to the rooms, however I do not see them much so I am really not 100% sure. After the kids finished their cards, I hopped from room to room, teaching Anthony his random English words of the day, chatting with Claudia, Jennifer and Leidy about daily life, chasing around Mario and he caused chaos with the nurses and just enjoying the hectic morning.

After the hospital, I met up with Kyle, Jessa and Leah and we headed to Barranco to try this restarautn called “Burrito Bar” that I had read about in an article. It sounded to me just like chipotle. GUESS WHAT? It is just like Chipotle!!!! The owner of the store is British and has been living in Peru for about a year and a half. He needed to start working to make some money so he opened this little hole in the wall! The words out of his mouth were literally, “just like chipotle right?” It was delicioussss! So good just to have a fresh, spicy burrito with guacamole! Then, we ditched Kyle and went shopping at the Inca Market in Miraflores near Parque Kennedy and made some quality purchases, INCLUDING ugly pants, which is by far the greatest thing I will bring home with me from Peru. Pictures to come one day when I wear them and the you will all be able to understand the beauty that is ugly pants. Picture to come NOW is the last bites of my semi-chipotle burrito bar burrito!

By the evening, my brain was tired from the shopping and constant Spanish speaking combo, so I rested a bit before going out for the night.

Saturdays at the hospital feel almost like a completely different place. There are no homeworks, no rules, no checking things out, it’s just, what can we do to have fun with these kids?? And then we go do it! The theme this weekend was animals, so I brought a bunch of arts and crafts stuff to make masks and fun animal like thingys. However, much to my surprise, the room I entered had about 10 children under the age of 4, and only two kids who were old enough to appreciate an art activity. So, needless to say I spent a good 20 minutes running around the hospital to the other salas looking for my coworkers to steal a toy from each of them so that my little kiddies could have something to do! After things finally settled down, I set up one little boy with stuff to make a mask and he worked with his mom on it the whole time. Everytime I poked my head into his room, he would frantically and excitedly call me in to show me his progress. I spent a good half hour with Arecely teaching her new English phrases. She already knew a large chunk of vocabulary. She was able to count to 40, knew colors, a handful of animals, and a few important phrases such as how are you, what is your name, I am nine years old. However, we worked on some more stuff and she was absolutely delighted to learn. I failed in calming Denise, a 3 year old girl who had to get blood drawn, but I did my best and held her in my lap while the nurses poked her teeny tiny arms with a much to large needle (for my liking anyways). I wanted to tell her that it doesn’t get any less scary when you are older, but I didn’t think that would help at the time. It made me remember getting woken up in the hospital at 6:30 every morning for a good week to get blood drawn. I could sympathize with the poor girl. One minute, she is just relaxing playing blocks with this white girl who speaks Spanish funny, and the next, she is being stabbed! Unfair…

At 12 I packed up my stuff, recapped and cleaned up with the others in the volunteer house/office and hopped on the bus to go home. I decided to hop on a different bus this time that I knew would take me close enough to my house. It ended up working out really well as I got off close to Wong, where Jessa, Zach, Katy and Mikayla were shoppin so I was able to enjoy the beautiful sunny day with them and walk a few blocks home!

Zach hung out for a while, we planned a trip for next weekend then Jessa and I chilled for the rest of the day!

Today was business as usual. Run, family lunch, chill time.

Que buena vida, no?

Weekend in the Amazon!

Thursday night Jessa and I decided to get into bed as early as possible as we were to leave to our final ISA excursion at 4 am sharp Friday morning! Much to my surprise, I did not sleep a wink that night. I seemed to have developed some sort of insomnia the past week or so. What was good is I did a lot of thinking about what things I want to do in my time left here. So, when Jessa’s alarm went off at 3:30 and she slept right through it, I hopped out of bed and was ready for the trip.

It was an hour and a half flight to land in the City of Iquitos, which is located in the department of Loreto. Iquitos is the biggest city in the world that can only be accessed by air or boat. When we landed and got off the plane, all of us were waked in the face with heat and humidity, like I have never felt before. It reminded me of a hot hot day in Hawaii, except way way more uncomfortable. After we gathered in the airport, we met our guides for the weekend: Rey, Rudy and Daniel. We got in a bus and traveled to Nauta which took about an hour, but was a very interesting ride because we got to see some scenery that was so different than Lima and all the other places we visited. It did remind me of Kauai in a lot of ways. Very lush and green. Although, still different in a lot of ways. After riding on the boat for a while, and getting the feel for the Amazon river, we headed to the lodge which our guides work for, the Pacaya Samiria Lodge. We had a tasty buffet lunch and got ready for our first Amazon jungle hike through the Restinga forest which was the area directly surrounding our lodge. After covering up with layers of buq spray, I put on high socks, pants, a long sleeve shirt and a hat. Remember the thing I said earlier about it being extremely hot? Still true. It was definitely uncomfortable but I was NOT going to get eaten alive by the bugs. Needless to say I did my fair share of sweating this weekend. After the hike we showered, relaxed, swung on the hammocks on our porches and enjoyed the sudden downpour and thunder and lightining. The rain helped cool us down significantly and it was pretty fun to be in the rain, considering I probably haven’t been in the rain since April or so. Sleeping the first night was a little challenging. I think I had the creeps from the amount of bugs I could hear and see, but I woke up the next morning excited to keep seeing more of the Jungle.

We woke up and enjoyed a nice breakfast, then got on the boats to do a hike in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve in the Nauta Caño zone. It was about 9:30 when we started the hike and this was more of a walk than a hike, so it was not as hot. After that, we got back on the boats and spent the rest of the day on the water. For lunch we ate Juane, which is a rice ball with chicken, olive and egg wrapped in a large banana leave. We drank fresh juice, we fished for piranhas and cooked a few for dinner back at the lodge later. We swam in the river, which was probably my favorite activity of the day because it was so fun and refreshing, and we saw some wildlife, such as monkeys, dolphins, sloths, and lots of pretty birds. ALSO, Jessa got bit by a piranha, which is definitely an experience and a good story, although I really would not use the word “exciting”. She is a okay, they really are just little animals with scary teeth. Check out my pictures for a better idea. As night fell, we went down a smaller river to try and find some spotted caymans by shining flashlights and looking for their red eyes. One of our guides caught one and passed it around so that people could see and hold it. It was a baby one so it was smaller and apparently a little easier to catch because they are more innocent. After that, we slowly made our way back down the narrower river to the big river, using out little flashlights to help guide the driver of the boat. Needless to say, it was a slow journey and we still ran into a handful of logs. It was definitely one of those “this would never be legal in the US” kind of things, and of course, I loved it. After we got back to the main river, I sat and enjoyed the beautiful sky we could see out there with no natural light. It’s been 3 months since I have seen the stars and I do not know if I have ever seen them that bright. It was so calming just to be out on the boat, going fast with the cool air rushing by. That was my favorite experience of the day.

The next morning we went to a nearby village and got to shop at a little arts and crafts market and play soccer with a bunch of the boys from the village. I had so much fun! I was slightly concerned I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion or get schooled by a 9 year old on the court, but in the end, I was extremely glad I did it and had a blast. We played for about 40 minutes till I needed a break and ended up playing volleyball with some of the young girls. I also chatted with some of the young girls, a young mom and a teenage boy. It was so interesting to think about how these people live. The lifestyle is just incomparable to anything I could ever imagine. After sweating enough for an entire lifetime, we returned to the lodge and me and 3 of my friends decided to utilize this outside shower spout thingy to rinse off in our swimsuits. It was quite refreshing and if I could have, I would have stayed under that water all day. But eventually, we had to pack up, eat lunch and head back into the city of Iquitos to do a few minutes of sightseeing, grab some dinner, ice cream, and head to the airport.

Overall, it was a very nice weekend. It was relaxing and warm and different and fun. I am really glad I went and really glad for the experience.

Daily Life

Last weekend a few of my American friends through a little Fall party where we had pumpkin bread and apple cider and pumpkin carving and it was a great time! I am definitely missing Fall and lots of things about Fall. Such as candy corn! But this little get together definitely made me feel a little better and was also a great time to catch up with some of the other people in my program who do not go to USIL with me because I do not see them very often! Also, on Tuesday night, I went to Karaoke with some of the same people and had a blast singing old 90s songs in English, and attempting to sing radio hits here in Peru in Spanish!

Speaking of school, I will write a little about my classes here in Peru since I have yet to do that. First, I am taking Introduction to Gastronomy. This class is fairly interesting, although pretty basic, general and it often feels like our professor copy and pastes info from Wikipedia and puts it on slides then continues to make generalizations about food, culture and history. However he is an entertaining guy, and his English is decent which makes the 2 hour class (that usually gets cut to about an hour and 20 minutes) bearable. There is about 12 of us in the classroom, me, Leah and other Peruvian students. All of the classes here are generally small, although this one is particularly small, probably because the first project and test we had were both pretty hard. I cannot even imagine taking this class if English was your second language! I have gastronomy 2 times a week.

On Tuesday s, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I have Advanced Spanish class which is probably the easiest Spanish class I have ever taken. The teacher is an oddball and very nice, but he is just too nice and wastes so much time. Last week, he spent at least 30 minutes trying to get the movie ‘The Incredibles’ in Spanish to play on the projector, while we sat and just talked to each other, most likely in English the whole time, since the class is almost completely composed of American students. There are 3 girls from other countries as well, but their English is pretty darn good. Makes me realize how dumb it is that a can only speak a language and a half while these girls speak at least 3 languages. Darn.

Then, on Wednesday mornings, I have History of Contemporary Peru. I still am unsure about how I feel about this class, because I am interested in the topic, however the readings have generally been dry and the teacher’s English is horrific. Which, is sometimes entertaining, and she flip slops back and forth between Spanish and English or some sort of combination of the two. Again, I am in that class with a large group of American students, but I have made friends with the Peruvians in that class as well. History is probably the class I like the least.

The best, but also busiest day of the week is Thursday, when I have bar tending class, which has turned out to be even more fun than I originally imagined it would be. Every day, a group does set up, squeezing fresh orange or lime juice, cleaning classes, slicing fruit, etc. Then, our professor shows us how to make 4-7 drinks as we take notes, and passes each one around for us to try after he makes them. Then, for the next two hours, we practice making the drinks ourselves! It is very interesting because I am in this class with a lot of Peruvians who are studying hotel management, tourism and gastronomy and many of them plan to own or run their own restaurant or hotel one day, so the skills they are learning in this class are really important. Obviously, it is more just a fun class for me, but I have learned a lot and maybe will be able to get myself at a bar sometime in the future! Is anyone looking to hire a Spanish speaking American bartender in California???

tequila sunrise

bloody mary

Overall, my day to day school schedule is fairly boring but I am trying to make the best of it by making friends with the people in my class, and just enjoying being here as a break from real life school. Part of me is really looking forward to going back to UCSD and working hard and learning a lot, but the other part of me really is enjoying these mind numbing classes.

UPDATE: JUST GOT CANDY CORN IN THE MAIL FROM MY PARENTS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

This week at the Hospital del Nino

I work at a children’s hospital 2 or 3 times a week and so far on this trip, these days have been some of my favorite. Today was definitely one of the days I am going to remember. The thing I struggle with the most at the hospital is language. Not in terms of helping the kids with their homework or holding simple conversations, but really being able to express properly how much I care about them. Last week when my mom was here she told me not to worry about it. She said that when she watched me, how I acted, smiled and treated the kids truly showed I cared for them (and I believed her because she doesn’t speak a word of Spanish and therefore understood nothing I said to those children). Today, with that in mind, I turned on some music for the kids and danced with those who were able to. One little boy, Mauricio, was reluctant to dance, he seemed to think he was too cool for school. Mauricio is 8 years old. However, after a few minutes, he runs over to me, grabs my hands and starts dancing. After A few minutes, I had to go do some rounds and check on some other kids, but he did not want me to leave. He wrapped his hands around my waist and would not let go. For the next hour I had little Mauricio wrapped around my waist like a sweatshirt and I could not stop smiling. They know I care about them, and that is really the only goal I need to accomplish.

Parents in Lima

My parents came this weekend and I have been looking forward to it for such a long time, I can't believe it here! This also led me to realize that my trip here is halfway over. Which was extremely sad...but, back to the happy: Parents are here! They arrived late Thursday night so I first met them early Friday morning at their hotel about a 15 minute bus ride/walk from my house. We spent the morning walking around the coast and visiting Larcomar, the upscale mall right near their hotel. Maybe, the Santana Row of Lima? We then walked to meet Leah and Jessa and we all took a cab to La Bistecca, a buffet that Jessa and I ate at with our family a few weeks ago and LOVED. The food is spectacular, with all kinds of stations including a giant meat grill, fresh pastas, a wok, ceviche and pizzas. Do not forget the chocolate fountain for dessert! Needless to say, we were happy and far too full when we left the restaurant 3 hours later...

Jessa and Leah had to take off but mom and I decided to walk around for a while and we ended up walking all the way back to the hotel which ended up being about 3 miles. After that, we went back to my house to drop off some stuff then took a taxi to central Lima to go to the water park and see the fountains! I enjoyed seeing them again and I think they had fun too! It was not as cold as the last time I went, so I was thankful for that! We returned back to the mall, got gelato and headed back to the hotel for the night!

Saturday we woke up and Dad and I went for a run along the coast which was great. I have not had a chance to head down there yet for a run and the air felt significantly better. Afterwards we ate a hotel breakfast and then headed over to visit Huaca Pucllana, which is a pre Incan ruin site in Lima, very close to my house. It was pretty interesting to learn and the weather was great! Lots of sun for the day. I then took my parents on their first Peru bus adventure! It was not all that adventurous, but we took a bus to Parque Kennedy then got off to eat lunch at Astrid and Gaston, one of the world’s top restaurants. I believe it lived up to my expectations. I had a delicious cocktail, I had a delicious meal. I will post pictures later. Eventually… I hope.

Sunday, we met with my Peruvian family for yet another, buffet lunch. We had a nice time, finished around five then went to see a movie! Just me, mom and dad. We saw Friends with Benefits, and it was pretty entertaining, and the most interesting thing was how I completely forgot what country I was in. Sitting in a theater with my parents watching a movie in English… At the end, when we were walking out and I heard people speaking Spanish, I finally remembered where I was…

Afterwards, we went home, my parents got packed, and I said goodbye to them for they took an early flight to Cusco! Speaking of which, I now have to go pack! I am going to meet them there tomorrow! YAY.