This Peruvian Life: Things will happen in your life that you can't stop but that's no reason to shut out the world

3 months of service, gone. Feels like I blinked and now I'm a quarter through my first year as a volunteer.

Brittany and I came up with a new catch phrase, it's called "getting Peru-ed". In Peru, as Peace Corps Volunteers, we come across external factors that affect our day to day lives, many of these factors are cultural and are out of our control we have to get to a point of accepting these cultural differences but sometimes we just need to complain. Getting Peru-ed includes but not limited to: a meeting starting more than 30 minutes late, eating weird animal parts (for example chicken feet, sheep intestines, cow blood), a Peruvian saying "yes" but they actually mean " no" and on the same side-Peruvians not accepting "no" as an answer, a Peruvian telling you that they will be there in 5 minutes but 30 minutes pass, post office workers not attending during their hours of attention, etc. Don't take my bitching the wrong way, I'm not trying to paint an ugly picture of Peru, this is my home now and I love it. Peru is a beautiful place with people who are caring, loving, and loyal and I feel so lucky to be able to share this experience with all of you; the phrase "getting Peru-ed" is our way of shrugging our shoulders, laughing it off and continuing to love Peru with all it's imperfections.

Vacation-aka rejuvenation-was amazing. This blog post is just a recap of my vacation, I'm very excited about it and to me the whole journey of my vacation is worth mentioning so it's a pretty lengthy description but I am humble enough to realize that it may not be as exciting to others so I'm sorry if you're eyes start to glaze over whilst reading. I'll try to keep it interesting; things to look forward to: the heels of my boots fell off-both of them and Lady Gaga gave birth to herself on stage.

I had some doubts before leaving for my vacation because some of my fellow volunteers were going on adventurous trips like Chachapoyas in the Amazonas to see a beautiful waterfall or the Colca Canyon in Arequipa and I was going to Mira Flores in Lima, somewhere I had already visited and is basically like being in America. I'm happy to tell you I have absolutely no regrets now about my trip to Lima. This vacation was exactly what I need to recollect and it was wonderful to getting see my best fran Brittany, sweet sweet Morgan and other volunteers. Before taking the long overnight bus ride down to Lima I stopped in Trujilo, La Libertad to meet my best fran Brittany, (we both jumped up and down and screamed when we saw each other) we spent the night in Huanchaco, a beautiful little beach town where we met up with some volunteers and had a fun night at local bar. On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we spent the part of the day on the laying on the beach but the ocean broke my shoes :( (and no I'm not referring to my boots, we'll get to that)

I was walking along the beach when the tide came up and broke my shoe wah wah wah

here I am trying to fix my shoes, I would have gone barefoot but the sand was SOOOO HOT

here is my temporary solution, that's a hair tie there

Then we returned to Trujilo and ate PAPA JOHN"S!!! My first bite of that warm dough and melted cheese (my mouth is watering as I type) was glorious; at the moment I was not jealous of the volunteers who had gotten together to make traditional Thanksgiving food because taking a bite of that Papa John's pizza (dipped in garlic sauce of course) was like being at home. If you know me at all you know I'll take pizza over any food any time, especially Papa John's pizza. Brittany and I discussed it, we agree the dough is what makes it so magical.

Later that night...
Brittany is a HUGE Twilight fan and I'll admit I was a fan of the books but all the movies were pretty horrible but she dragged me to the final movie and I actually enjoyed it, not ashamed to say it, ok maybe a little ashamed. Before going to the movie Brittany had said she was pretty certain our bus was at 10:30-Brittany had bought our bus tickets in advance a couple weeks prior but had since lost them; I love that girl to pieces but I have never met anyone who loses things as easily as she does, if you think I'm forgetful you need to meet this girl. Brittany if you are reading this, I know you know this about yourself and you know I love you anyway. Anyways the movie got over around 9:30 and so we figured we had plenty of time to get back to the hostel to recoger our stuff and get on the bus. WRONG! The bus was at 10pm and we got to the bus station around 10:05. Oops. The lady at the counter wasn't helpful at all, usually if you lose a ticket they will print out a new one for a small fee but since we had missed our original bus time they wouldn't print off a new ticket for a new bus time so poor Brittany had to buy two new tickets to Lima; I offered to pay but she said that since she was the one who lost the tickets she paid for them.

On Friday morning we arrived in Lima and dropped our stuff off at Hostel Pariwanna. If you are ever in Lima I highly recommend this hostel; it has a really great atmosphere, free breakfast (tea/coffee/bread/jam isn't much but it's enough for a volunteer like me), a nice bar on the rooftop, and the staff is really great. Brittany and I met up with 2 other volunteers and the four of us shared our room with 4 dudes. I had never shared a hostel with people I didn't know but I recommend it. Sure you want to be careful, lock up your stuff and whatnot but it's an opportunity to meet people from different parts of the world. Our roommates were from London, Peru, Canada, and I'm not sure about the 4th guy. Anyways us girls went shopping in Lima to look for some new clothes for the Lady Gaga concert and I had come across a boot sale-2 pairs for 100 soles. That's like 50 bucks and they were really cute! However I learned my lesson about buying cheap shoes because as I was getting into the taxi to go to the concert the heel of my boot fell off and as I was exiting the taxi the other heel broke off, I had to stand at the concert in boots without heels. Later we went back to the store but they wouldn't give me my money back but they did take them to a "repair shop" and had the heels super-glued back on- Peru-ed.

Back to the concert- AMAZING! Lady Gaga is a crazy talented person, I mean to say that she is crazy, but she is also talented. She changed her costume (can't call it anything but costume) in between almost every song and had some pretty wild stage pieces. Imagine one of those stage pieces as a big blow up bouncy houses but instead of a bouncy house imagine that it's a blow up version of Gaga's legs and her cooch. Now imagine Lady Gaga herself exiting out of the cooch whilst singing "Born This Way"- pretty rad. She is quite strange but she is sincere. She pulled some of her fans on stage and got really personal with them it was very sweet; one of her "little monsters" was bawling his eyes out sitting next to her while she played the piano. I had soooo fun much dancing along to my favorites, "Disco Stick" and "Bad Romance". Good times-great oldies.

Saturday was a great day of relaxation. We went out to eat at a wonderful sandwich place "La Lucha" and I laid around in my bed and read more of Harry Potter in Spanish. Saturday night we went on a hunt for sushi and finally arrived at an all-you-can-eat sushi place, we got there about a half hour before closing so we had to order fast but we were warned that if we had to pay extra for the pieces we didn't eat. I ordered 5 maki rolls and 1 dessert roll (strangely tasty- coconut, caramel, rolled in rice and with ice cream). I ate 31 pieces I knew if I had eaten anymore I would have barfed so I shared with the ladies but they too felt like barfing so I put the remaining 2 pieces in a napkin and stuffed it into my hoodie so I wouldn't be charged the extra. Man I'm so classy.
On Sunday we headed back to Chaclacayo to see our training host families. It was so great to see them.

Ok I'm going to put an end to this post I'm sorry it was so long but like I said I thought my vacation was so great and if you can believe it I left things out!!! My next post will be about my early in service training. I'll try do to that soon! Enjoy the pictures. Love you all mucho!!!!

Here is an artisan lady doing some work, she was explaining it but none of us understood her :/

my girl Brittany and I

Not sure if you can tell but these books are all wrapped in plastic , Brittany and I were in a book store where all the books are wrapped in plastic and I thought it was pretty strange, apparently in here you do judge a book by it's cover

this is Brittany's "I can't believe I misplaced the tickets and that we missed the bus and then I had to buy two new tickets " face

the ladies and I before the concierto de Lady Gaga

Here is my Lima host family, they are eating the lasagna I made for them

In Lima there is a restaurant called Burrito Bar that we had heard about from many volunteers but we hadn't been there until this trip. It has the BEST burritos I've e ever tasted in my life, that or it's just been a long time since I had a burrito: >6 months. I was pretty stoked about this place and they had chips and salsa (not free in Peru) which isn't common here either