Friday night going to bed early because of work tomorrow. Bottle Rocket is on! I take back every bad thing I ever said about peruvian television programming choices. Owen Wilson at his finest, Luke Wilson at his best. I forgive them for every wretched film they went on to make without wes anderson. Eating these chocolate-covered coconut cookies called picaras. It´s scary how much fun I can have by myself.

I´ve never been much of a "friends" fan, but here I usually wind up watching it while I eat lunch. Last night I had these dream that I was with the whole cast and we were on one of these huge, red, double-decker bus that they have here. And they were talking about how they throw birthday parties for each other. And I was like "hey, joey, you guys never throw me birthday parties." And he was like "you need to be more assertive and demand that we throw you a birthday party." And I was all like aw, man, maybe he´s right. I need to be more assertive. I was also having trouble making all my luggage fit together. I kept reorganizing it and trying to make smaller bags fit into bigger bags, so I was the last person to get off the bus when we stopped. What does it mean? I don´t know. Linda?
Tomorrow, I am here for 6 more weeks. I´m thinking about what I want to make of this time. My brother and I are going to the jungle in a few weeks. And I´m thinking of working in an orphanage in Arequipa, a province like ten hours away, for two weeks.
It´s still freezing cold here at night, but usually hot and sunny in the middle of the day.
I´ve been taking taxis recently, because I need to get from one job to another in thirty minutes during rush hour. Every taxi driver has a different route to get to the same place. Peru: just because you´re making a right-hand turn doesn´t mean you need to get in the right lane. No, you can be in the left lane and just turn right in front of the lane on your right. Very interesting.

ayacucho

On Friday Jorge and I got on a bus for Ayacucho. We were in the front seats on the second story of a double-decker bus. So nice, they gave us pillows, blankets, cookies, sandwhiches, tea, and Les Mis in spanish. TEN HOURS LATER we arrived. I am not a morning person. Sometimes I even want to kill people when I wake up too early. Also, traveling makes me irritable. But we took a taxi to his friend´s house and they gave us food. Then we went around to see the town square, cathedrals and stuff and got lucama ice cream with chocolate chips. Lucuma is this really awesome fruit used in desserts. It was so hot and sunny- awesome because up until last week it´s been freezing in Lima. Then we went to this cultural museum. I have a picture with scene-in-a-box thing they have here. They´re so gorgeous. Usually there are nativity scenes inside, but it can be anything- any kind of religious or secular scenes, from an inch tall to one of this size.The coolest one I saw was in a market, a scene of a shop with people making all these crazy masks.

Then we took a nap and woke up to lunch waiting for us. They made pachamanca, which I think I wrote about before. They take all kinds of things, chicken, pork, sweet potatoes, corn, sometimes fish, sometimes platains, these big green beans like soy beans that are really good, then cook them in banana leaves or a big pot, and cook them in steam in a hole in the ground with rocks on top. So delicious.

Then we checked out more of the area. It´s the dry season so a lot of it looks desert-y. It´s a really rural area. You can see mountains all around you, and also big piles of dirt. Then we went back to the town square and got juice. The center looks like the town square in Cusco. I´m going to miss all the juice places here, of every imaginable combination. We got peach and pineapple juice and it was so romantic. Then it got dark and we went outside to the park and it was a holy day for a virgin and they had all these amazing fireworks. We took a video, I´ll put it up later.

The next morning we woke up early and took an hour and a half taxi ride to somewhere else in Ayacucho where the Spanish army surrendered to the Peruvian independence army. It was a group taxi, and we sat with a Canadian nun who has lived here for four years. She went with us to the site of the monument to the generals in the war. A ton of other countries helped peru defeat Spain.


Then some kids who were hanging around asked us if we wanted to take a horseback ride to see waterfalls nearby.
It was fun. I haven´t ridden a horse in so long. We only walked, but it was still fun. Jorge´s horse was way too small for him, which was pretty entertaining.


It was so beautiful! We got off our horses and walked down this steep trail down to the stream, freezing cold from the andes mountains. They had a few mini huts with benches to relax, so we sat down and looked at the mountains and waterfalls.

Then we walked around different artisinal markets and food markets. We ate ceviche and caldo gallina, hen soup. So good. We wanted to try cuy (guinea pig) but it seemed too hot to eat weird fried pets for the first time. Oh yeah, also, this whole time I´m getting sunburned. I haven´t worn sunscreen in like 4 months, and I didn´t think it would be that hot in Ayacucho. I brought face sunscreen, but it wasn´t enough.

Then we went to the house where the Spanish signed surrender papers. This is one of the cannons from the war.

And this is a doorway of a really old church.

Then we rode the bus home and took another nap. We woke up a little irritable-my shoulders were burnt to a crisp and Jorge was coming down with the flu. But we agreed that we had a wonderful trip. Then there was a thunder and lightning storm! I didn´t realize how much I´ve missed those. It never even rains in Lima. This one was awesome, and felt so good on my sunburn. Then we packed our stuff, and went back to the juice place. Then took the bus back to the Lima. There was a crying baby on the bus. But he wasn´t too bad. He only cried for like half an hour of the ten hour ride, so we counted our blessings. That´s all I can think of for now. One last picture:

It feels like summer today! I´m wearing a t-shirt. I feel like a completely different person when it´s warm. Is that extremely shallow? My afternoon english classes were cancelled, so I am at Jorge´s university where he is finishing his thesis. We had this awesome fruit salad-icecream sunday awesomeness and I reviewed my lesson plan while he read something for his class. He´s getting a masters in philosophy. I´m kind of jealous. I miss being in school, even it makes me unbelievably stressed. I´m excited about traveling outside Lima this weekend. It almost doesn´t matter where I go. It´s so sunny right now, I love it!

I have the house to myself today, and I´m eating leftover cheese and crackers from a party my roommate had last night. Yesterday I taught two english classes, both individual classes. The first guy has a regular class and we´re supposed to go through this book, but we mostly just talked. I think that after you reach a certain point in learning a language, the best way to improve is just through conversation. I told him I studied philosophy and we talked about Camus and the connection between literature and philosophy. It was so nice! I can´t believe I get paid the same for that class as for babysitting all those bad kids last week. Then I had another similar class in the afternoon. Suddenly, I´m getting offered classes left and right!

I had a three-hour break between the classes, so I went to the mall across the street. I ran into a bunch of friends from church. We went to KFC (people here LOVE kfc. they call it "Kentucky" as in I ´m hungry for Kentucky!) and one of the girls used to work there so they gave us a free huge meal.

I´ve been watching CNN. I started watching this sunday afternoon segment focus on the middle east with this middle east expert. It´s really good. Sometimes the guy just editorializes. Today he had on middle east scholars and journalists. (that is, they study the middle east. they aren´t middle eastern) I like watching interviews where the interviewer knows what she´s talking about and has an opinion. And this guy totally does.
Also, I was watching the news before it. They were talking about Somalia, and how the options people have are living in the city and being bombed and attacked, or going to refugee camps where there is almost no food and terrible disease. Things are so bad there but they´re getting even worse. Half the population is dependent on foreign assistance for food. I don´t think foreign aid workers are allowed in, so the US isn´t sure where their money is going, maybe to the militant group al-shabaab, so they´re suspending millions of dollars of aid until they figure it out. Somalia has had five droughtst in a row, one in five children is severely malnurished, and a million people have been displaced because of their civil war. So, it´s lame that I need to see something on TV to care about it, but now I want to go to Somalia.

Jorge and I are going to Ayacucho this weekend. It´s a province like ten hours away. One of his classmates has a house there. I think it will be warmer there, or at least sunny.