High Fives All Around

Yesterday we did something that we thought would be impossible. 

We went into and out of Cajamarca ALL BY OURSELVES! 

We caught the bus in, found our stop, found our way through the city and found the spot to get back on the bus and head home. After that, I felt like I could do anything. Here’s a few snippits of what we did yesterday:

First we went to the Aldea (orphanage) and played with the children for about 2 hours. I’ve never been to an orphanage before and it was a lot like playing with our kids here at El Bichito, but just knowing that these were orphans with no family and no home of their own… wow, it completely breaks my heart. But I fell in love with them just as quickly as I fell in love with my Bichito ninos.  I sat and played (and lost) four games of chess with a 16 year old boy named Jose Luis and all the while, the younger kids (whom I haven’t even met) would come and crawl up in my lap and just want to be held and loved. They all called me “Senorita” but that made me feel old, so I tried to get them to call me Elia.  Also, while we were there, we got burnt to a crisp. I remember being warned that Cajamarca is super close to the sun or something so you get a lot of sun really fast, but we didn’t have time to put on sunscreen before we left and I have never been this red in my life! Luckily mine is already starting to turn into a nice tan.

After that we took ourselves around the city and tried to get a feel for it. We spent a good 30+ minutes searching for a certain pizza parlor that we’d been told about and when we finally found it, we discovered that it didn’t open until six, which is too late for us to be in Cajamarca alone. Here are some other things we learned/saw/heard:

A boy our age, who was Mormon, from the States AND spoke English. Meet Elder Parker Seitz from Vernal, Utah. MADE OUR DAY!

Don't mind how tired, dirty and au natural we look, but do notice the cute coats we fell in love with whilst shopping at the mall!

 We walked by a man on a cell phone, after he passed us we heard him tell the person on the other line that he saw a bunch of gringas.

I am much more apt to ask directions or help from a Peruvain man with glasses. They just seem nicer and more approachable.

Pelt the gringas with water balloons as hard as you can is a popular game all throughout the city. Next time, we’ll fight back. 

There was an adorable man our age on the bus who gave us his seat. He was clean and therefore, so cute!

We saw a cage of dead guinea pigs on our way home.

When you order fried chicken…it’s not like KFC. It’s more like normal chicken that has just sat in a pool of oil for an allotted amount of time. 

Old ladies with no teeth follow us around and beg us to by their weird candies.

We made it in and out and around all by ourselves. We are alive! Over all it was tons of fun!