Oops?

      So there was much confusion about whether I had colegio or not today. Another student, Allison, last night said that I do, and apparently I DID, but I didn't go, because last night Nancy, my host mother, was looking at the anniversario schedule and insisted I didn't need to go, because it was just more stupid nothingness, so instead I went to university with Jhoselyn again for psychology class :D Awesome. And made another new friend Guillermo.

      Going dancing again tonight in HAVAAAANNNA!!! So excited :) And this is that kid who used to hate dancing. But when there's a bunch of hot latinos trying to teach you to salsa, cuz you suck, it's a lot more fun !! hahahahaha

Universidad es mejor !!

        So today, as part of the anniversary thingy at Sr de la Vida, there was no school. So, Jhoselyn asked if I wanted to go to university with her. It was awesome! She's studying administration, which is a litttttttle bit boring, but it was way better. All the people are more my age group and a bit older, and it was way more interesting. She told the professor that I'm going to be studying there hahaha so it's a bit confusing. I helped with the work today and yeah. I loved it! Each day you have one class. Today it was admin from 1-6, and tomorrow it's something I forget the name of, but I have to go to colegio uggh. And monday is math! Which I actually kinda love, and you don't need to know the language to know the numbers. But I better wait until I've actually had a few days of classes in colegio before I ask about switching programs. But now I'll be missing 3 days or more of university, and i've already missed a week, and we have to talk to all the professor(a)s and yeah. Confusing. But it's soooo much better!!! Kind of like our version of highschool, while their "colegio" is more like our version of elementary school. I hate being reminded of those days! Crossing my fingers though! Although I'd rather study engineering or architectura (the only cool sounding options)

       GOD it's so hard not to be taking pictures! It actually hurts me to not be able to take my nikon d5000 out on the street for awesome public shots of city life and rural life of Peru to show you all! Last Sunday the father took me on a drive through the farmlands and rural part of Chimbote. It was awesome ! But I already get stared at enough, and I don't want to be robbed and screamed at. Some don't like getting pictures taken. And people already think that all gringos are rich. I don't wanna seem like a tooootal tourist. :( The culture shock is incredible. Sometimes I feel like a ghost. Other times I open my eyes and feel like I'm being hit in the face with a wall of disbelief. It's amazing. Most incredible thing I've ever done. I wish I could explain it better !! Most life changing experience ever. Even if I came home right now (FAT CHANCE! no offense..), I'd have learned a thousand things about myself and how I learn, grow, adapt, think about, react to, solve and accept things. Breathtaking, like actually. But I have to go to bed. Colegio manana means I gotta get up at 6ish.

Love you guys !

ALMOST miss Canada ;)

     Well actually I just miss the freedom. Jesus. The schools here are psycho. Actually PSYCHO!!! My school has policemen that stand outside the school with guns on their belts. "For our security." That's um. Comforting. And there's other "watchmen" inside that guard the doors. You're not allowed in or out except at dismissal and between 7-7:20am.
     And this one teacher is such a prick. Like a grumpy old woman with nothing better to do than torture small children. Today I found out he's not actually a teacher. He's ANOTHER type of policeman. That goes around and makes sure the kids are following all the rules. And does stuff just because. We were just sitting in the outside part/sports cement field thing (which is in the centre of the building, but outside) on those plastic white chairs. I was sitting on one, had my feet on another. There were like 20 empty chairs, so nobody needed to use it. He comes over, pushes my feet off the chair and takes it to the side. I'm like.... ok. That. You know. That makes sense. ?!?!?! But I'm in Peru and I'm not allowed to question authority.

     Then when we had our free time (which was actually kinda all day...) and other kids were playing ping pong. Kathleen brought out a volleyball and then a few of us formed a circle to the side, not disrupting the precious ping pong tournament, and were volleying and setting it. That lasted for 1 whole minute. He comes over, takes the volleyball, walks away. He doesn't even say anything either. No reasoning or explanation for his obvious mental madness and confusion. Poor man. Maybe he thought it was a ping pong ball.

     And he got furious with me for having my nose piercing in. I woke up at 6:55 and left for school at 7:15. I wasn't thinking about every single thing and forgot to take it out. I also was hoping he wouldn't notice because it hasn't fully healed yet and if I take it out for a long time, like a school day, it regrows. So he kinda spazzed and made me take it out. Took me a good 5 minutes trying to re-pierce it when I got home from school. The piercing metal thing has a flat end. Pushing that through a layer of skin is hard and slightly painful. o_O and frustrating. It hasn't stopped hurting and uggh. Doing this every day is gonna piss me off !!! Uggh. Jerk. The rest of the teachers are fairly decent though. Still didn't have classes today. BOOOOORRRRRRIIINNNNNGGGG

Time on ma hands

     Sometimes you got it, and sometimes you don't. Anyways, someone suggested that I write about more of the little things, because I realize that there are MANY things here that you guys don't know about and are very very weird or strange or just plain different!

     First thing. Toilets. For some reason they don't know what toilet seats are? Toilet, no toilet seat. Also very hard to find toilet paper. You kinda have to bring around your own if you're really fussy about it. Yuck. Oh, and even if you're lucky enough to find toilet paper, (even in people's houses, which is weird...), you can't flush it down the toilet. Waste paper basket. And the showers are... better than the 0 star motel in Italy, but there's only water at certain times of the day, and some nights there's no running water at all. And you can't drink the water, whether you're Peruvian or not. Only bottled (oooh the environment!!! :( !) or boiled, or you'll get sick n die. Ha

     Dogs. Everywhere. Wild, beautiful dogs roaming and sleeping in and sometimes (but I haven't seen it often) fighting or humping in the streets. They're generally, depending on where you are, very calm and relaxed. They won't bite you or approach you unless you do something to them first. Not like the crazy, rampid hyena packs of starving, mean dogs in Mexico :S Most of the ones I've seen are well fed but it still makes me very sad to see them all homeless. Yesterday I saw a mostly hairless, starving and sunburnt dog and it kinda made me wanna cry. The Quezadas laughed. >.< When asked, everyone here is very surprised that the only dogs in Canada usually have owners and live with them!

     Terrorrrraffic!! Oh my. No wonder the exchange doesn't let you drive here. I've seen... three or four painted roadlines? Maybe? Not that it matters if they're there or not. Speed bumps every 20 metres, and always before crosswalks. People drive where they want and when they want. I'm surprised I haven't seen a dozen car crashes!! People seem to like it better driving in the middle of the highway, not using signals of any sorts, and cramming as many together as close together in one lane as they can. Oh yeah! The taxis!! In most places I've been, (make that all..) you get in a taxi, and the driver turns on/off (I can't remember) his light, to show he has a passenger, takes you where you want to go, and turns the light on/off again to show they're available. In Peru, they cram as many passengers into one trip as possible. I suppose it's more environmental? At first i was very confused!! And they don't use lights. They use horns and hands. Honking horn means that they have room for more passengers. A hand out the window shows how many seats they have. Ooooh my. I love it :D Get to meet a bunch of randoms hahaha the other day it was a 70 year old man. Nice guy. Kinda um. Not all there. But very harmless. :P Don't worry mother! Never in a taxi alone --or alone with a stranger :P You know what i mean.

      Oooh and at school, I have to wear a uniform, which I still have to buy, because none of the stores we went to had any for Sr de la Vida, or only have XL sizes. You also have to wear black shoes. And you're not allowed to dye your hair, or wear it loose. It has to be a certain length, not too long and not too short, and has to be tied back. You're also not allowed to wear earings of any kind, even though every single female teacher I saw was wearing them. Apparently I also have to take out my nose piercing every day. I really hope it doesn't grow back. Ugghh.

      And the schools are crazy. Every student has a student ID card with a bar code that they use to sign in and out of the school every day with a scanner. You're only allowed to enter between certain times, and if you're late, you cannot get in. AYAYAIII! No skipping classes for me man. Jajaja not that I would EVER! :O But that's a bit anal. And all the teachers are super business creepy like in professional suits and such. But then you talk to them and they're still mostly human, and pretty funny. The english teacher let us watch part of LEGION in spanish and once the old grandma in the diner went demon psycho, all the kids started screaming like little babies. Oh myyy.

     Can't think of anything else, and I dunno how many people actually read this haha OH and the other day we ate at an Asian food restaurant in Chimbote. Very strange mix of the two cultures. That is all. :)

It's been 2 weeks minus a day

      Hard to believe! It seems longer yet shorter. Feels like I can barely remember living in Whitehorse or my last days there, but at the same time it still feels like I've just gotten to my host family and I still have A LOT of adjusting to do. Yesterday was my first day of school.

      We're starting school (colegio) in the middle of their school year. They graduate or have some sort of celebration in December (for the cinco grade, which is our equivalent of grade 12. But I think the work equivalent would be more like grade 11ish, because when I was helping Jhoselyn with her UNIVERSITY math homework, it was stuff I learned three years ago in grade 10 math!!) and then January/February is their two month summer vacay! Mona and I are attending a private catholic school called Senor de la Vida. This week is their 8th year anniversary (apparently they celebrate every year...seems pointless but ooook) so we don't have any classes all week... ugh! Feels like I'm never going to get started!! All I wanna do is go to school in spanish and learn spanish hahaha. But it's a fairly small school, smaller than FH, probably as many students as Selkirk, and Mona and I were introduced on a stage to them all. They kind of worship us. All the little kids are very cute and sweet and crowd around and hug us and ask us a million questions. Some are very shy while others come and sidle up as close as possible with cute lil smiles haha. It's funny because the school is from our equivalent of K-12, and all the little boys keep asking how old we are. When we were on the stage, they took questions from the student audience, and the first question was "Do you have boyfriends?" Hahahaha. She does, I don't, but I said yes. :P They don't seem to be bothered by it though and keep trying hahaha

        All my classmates are very nice, decent seeming kids and it's cool how genuinely interested everyone is in where we're from and what it's like and everything about ourselves. In Canada, we're so used to it being multicultural and having new exchange students. In some ways it's good, but here the exchange students feel more welcome than in Canada, because everyone wants to know them and be their friend. It's hard to get used to, but I feel super comfortable. I feel really old though!! All my classmates are 16, with a few being 17, but at first I swore that I was in a room full of 14 year olds. They definitely don't act like any of the people my age back home. And the San Pedro University is right beside (kinda the same building) and I hate looking over there and seeing a bunch of people more my age group haha aahhh. And the work's probably more interesting. BUT I shouldn't say that yet, because I've only seen the math. But isn't that the hardest course? I'll have to wait and see after next week, because this week is just a bunch of random activities and assemblies and such. Uggh such a slow pace! But I'm going to watch what I say hehe don't want it to bite me in the ass later :P Already have some "good" friends though. Here you have one classroom and the teachers alternate. The classroom (salon) itself, is very plain and white and bare and empty, with a cement floor. Yay schooool... and there's no library! It's very weird.