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.