Valentine's Day in Peru

Valentine’s Day in Peru is probably up there in my top three all times Valentine’s days…possibly top 2 (Ok, so I can’t remember any SUPER great Valentine’s days, but I like to think that I’ve had good experiences with this lovely holiday).

Here’s how it happened:

The morning started beautifully. I got mucho amounts of laundry done and hung out, I did Ab Ripper X and I took a cold shower. So Far so Good!

Also, we got two sets of flowers :) Perfect!

Almost no kids showed up today.. maybe like 40 total, which is a lot less than usual. We made them each Valentine’s with really yummy suckers. Brit took the boys to go play futbol and a lot of the girls ended up going with them. Abby and I were left with just one little girl.

I was pretty tired, so I came upstairs, did some blogging and sacked out for a good 20 or so minutes. When I woke up, it was time to go to into Cajamarca. We had with us Alecksi and Ricardo and were going to meet up with Robert, Jorge and Daniel at the movie  theater in the Mall.

We watched a movie called Los Illusianauts. It was Peruvian made and only in Spanish (no subtitles). Even though I didn’t catch all of the dialogue, I know for a fact that it is a movie I will never have the desire to see again. Pretty much it was a cartoon about a boy with deadly flatulence and his friends. Super gross.

Our Movie theater snacks: We go into the Peruvian store and come out with all things American...lame

After the movies we walked over to Capilla Aueropuerto and met some of Ricardo’s family. We waited there until it was time to walk over to the Capilla Pueblo Libre for our first Peruvain YSA dance.

While waiting for the dance we delivered our Valentines to our friends (we gave them homemade chocolate chip cookies!) We also told them all about American Dancing customs….like how you dance in a big circle to the fast songs as opposed to with one partner and you know…just the other basic American customs: Dancing while combing our hair with forks, dancing on our knees at REALLY elegant dances,(girls wear knee length dresses to these dances, and boys cut off their tux pants at the knees) and the really cool kids dance without shoes. We are so bad.

And the dance began! With an opening prayer, spiritual thought and a hymn.

Latin music, Reggatone, Brasilian Music, Columbian Music and a bit of unedited “I Want to Be a Billionaire..” American music.

It was SO much fun! We pretty much got paired up with one partner for most of the night and they taught us the ways of latin dancing..Salsa, Merengue etc.  I asked my partmer where he learned and he said that pretty much everyone is born just knowing, “It’s in my latin blood”. And that’s when I got jealous because this girl has not an ounce of latin blood and even less rhythm so dancing does not come easily for me!

But our friends were more than willing to teach us and help us learn. The last hour of the dance is called “Hora Loca” and it started with confetti being thrown in our faces, balloons and streamers being thrown and an hour of upbeat music where you aren’t allowed to sit down!

While we dance, people come around offering you small treats on silver platters and if you sit down, you are lazy. Towards the end of the dance, the DJ started playing a slew of popular American music. We of course were rocking out to these songs and singing them at the top of our lungs. The DJ thought it was super hilarious to blast the music and then turn the volume off so that it was just us singing. He did that multiple times. While we were dancing to this English stuff I looked around and found that we were the ONLY ones on the dance floor. Everyone else was sitting and just watching us…laughing of course J But we’re used to that and continued with our interpretive/crazy dancing.

Oh it was sooo fun! We took lots of videos, but alas, they would take forever to upload here, so if you’re curious, find me when I get home and I will show you Stake Dances, Peruvian style.

Also, there is a really formal YSA dance next week…it’s a big deal, and translated into English it’s called Prom!!! And it just so happens that I got asked to it during this dance! At first I didn’t really realize what was going on, but it looks like I’ve got myself a date to the fancy dance!

We came home that night exhausted but happy. It’s how we’ve been ending most of our days recently. I think it means that they day was a grand success!

Hope yours was too!

-Elia

Just Another One Of The Locals

You know that feeling when you think you’ve had the greatest day ever….and then the next day is just as good if not better? Well, here’s the thing. That has pretty much happened every day here in Peru. It just gets better and better and better. Remember how awesome our Friday was? Well Saturday may have topped it.

Here’s why:

We started our morning off with a run into Cajamarca. We’ve come to love the stretch of land from Banos to Cajamarca and were set with our tunes and our tennis’ to take it on on this sunny, Saturday morning. We didn’t have much planned for the day, so we thought we’d stroll through Cajamarca to see what we could find. We found sweet after treat after sweet. Cajamarca is dusted with dozens of quaint little bakeries and panaderias. Each filled to the brim with fresh bread, empanadas, and sweet treats I couldn’t pronounce or prepare if I tried all day. We decided to do a cake walk of our own and stop at every single panaderia that we passed to buy one treat to split. It was so much fun and we tried all sorts of yummy new treats! None of which were very close to the treats we’d find in American bakeries.

After that, we got a nasty bite from the shopping bug and went up to Santa Appolonia to do some shopping in the little shops filled with cool Peruvian things. At this point we were on a time crunch because Liz and Miguel and Alecksi had invited us over for a homemade Peruvain lunch! (Wahoo!) Well, right as we were walking out of our last little shop, guess who we saw!? Our friend Robert (who we had gone out for Pizza with the previous Wednessday). We couldn’t believe that we actually ran into somebody that we knew in Cajamarca!! Awesome. For sure. After chatting with him for a bit, he invited us to come back into Cajamarca that night so that he and Jorge could treat us to one of their favorite Peruvian meals at a really good restaurant. Of course we were down for that, so we rushed off to the Quinde to do some rapid shopping (we needed ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies, and a chicken ) and then bused home.

The second we got home, Brit hopped in the cold shower while Abby and I gathered our things to take a hot shower in Banos (a Saturday tradition, anddd since we were going out that night, we needed to smell about 100 percent better than we smelled at the moment).

On our way down to Liz’s for lunch, a white guy on a bike passed us and said, “Hey, hows it going? You look lost.” I think that would have offended me if I hadn’t been so shocked that a white man in Puylucana was speaking ENGLISH to us. After chatting with him for a bit, we learned that he and his wife are from New Hampshire and that he works in the mines. His wife needs white friends, so stay updated on our new friends Danielle and Charlie.

Meanwhile, lunch at Liz and Miguel’s was incredible!! We had Lomos Saltaba (sp?) and I just about died and went to heaven. So delicious!  Have I mentioned lately how great Liz and her family are? Because we truly love them. Liz then went through and helped us plan our wild adventure into the Amazon jungle and into Cuzco. Let’s just say that we are a little bit more than SO EXCITED for that little adventure of a lifetime!

Since we were supposed to meet up with Robert and Jorje in Cajamarca at 5, we split up to get work done from here. Abby and I went to go shower while Brit went to buy water. We met up with perfect timing and we were Cajamarca bound in no time.

At this point, (and for the past 4 hours) the rain had not stopped pouring on us. So we were wet and quite the sight to see. But Jorge and Robert easily spotted the wet, gringas with brightly colored umbrellas, so we didn’t even have to wait long for them in the giant park.

We took a Taxi down to San Martin and were pleasantly surprised and treated to a wonderful meal at a comparatively fancy restaurant. We had Papas Fritas, ensalada y Pollo a la brazza (sp?) and we loved every bite of it. 

We had an awesome conversation with our Peruvian friends and it is helping our Spanish improve leaps and bounds. Since we can only communicate with them in Spanish, and awkward silences are not my thing, this forces me to work extra hard on speaking and understanding what they’re saying. By the end of the night I truly felt like we were speaking the same language and that it came so easily. At one point, I completely just asked them a question in English because I had forgotten that they spoke something different from my native tongue. It wasn’t hard or difficult any  more, it was almost (ALMOST) like speaking English to my American friends.

Our lovely new gentleman friends helped us get a bus (and paid for it) and accompanied us all the way to our front door (even though it’s 30+ minutes away from their homes, what gentleman!) We were talking outside for quite some time and we accidently made them miss the bus to take them back to Cajamarca….actually we made them miss it three times!!! By this point, it was too late and no more buses were coming, so we bid our friends adieu as we watched them walk home on a cold, dark night. We felt kind of bad about that J

We came home, made some popcorn and continued planning and preparing our amazing Amazon adventure, and I got to talk to my Pops and Beebs on the phone, always a pleasure.

SO it was a fabulous, fantastic, awesome day! We have big plans for this week too, with our kids, ourselves and our new friends! P.S. It’s Carnaval this week too, pray that we don’t die!

-Elia

Ring, Ring Part 2!

Guess what I did last night?

I shall tell you. We arrived home from a Stake Talent Show in Cajamarca at around 10 pm. (It was the latest we’ve ever been out and it’s a big no, no, but we figured it was for a church function and we were good J And our dear friend Pedro was kind enough to accompany us the whole way home.) As we were trying to find our keys for our house, we could hear the phone ringing inside. We got the door open just as the ringing stopped. Luckily, a few moments later it started ringing again.  I ran downstairs anxious to answer it, because I had just had a great day and was hoping so badly that it was my poppo’s voice that I’d hear on the other end. But it wasn’t. It was Hermano Sandro, our Spanish Speaking area coordinator. 

And here’s what I did. I had a whole conversation on the phone with him! I only had to ask him to slow down once and to repeat himself one other time. I hung up feeling very accomplished! Granted, he did speak slow and he did use basic words  and I only caught half of what he said… but still! 

Reason to celebrate!

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

One very comical part of this trip thus far can not be written in full on this blog. However, I can say this: We can run, but we can't hide.

We thought that we'd left boys/dating/anything of that sort back home in the states. But they have found us is some of the funniest most bizarre ways. Let's just say that the Peruvian way is hilarious.

Don't worry, we're on a strict no dating while in South America policy, but it's quite flattering to be pursued even when we are looking at our absolute worst and unable to communicate with 99.9% of the population.

And that is all I have to say about that.