I thought Tuesday was Thursday. But I think today's Thursday.

     Monday - Jhoselyn and I went to our friend Brian/Kemper's house for his going away party because the next morning he left to move to Argentina for five years!! :( It's weird how close I've become with some people here already. Here, family and friendship is above everything. Definitely something I'm going to miss. We're family. I'm lucky to have Jhoselyn as a host sister too, because most of the other AFS students here don't have as many friends as I do, and are starting to feel lonely, whereas I feel like I have un MONTON de really good people around me. <33 But I do really miss you guys at home. Today in colegio we had to make a video of Christmas (and I did mine of Xmas in Canada/north america) and when I was looking at pictures of snowy white christmas trees and stuff, I had tears in my eyes thinking of Christmas at home and how amazing it is. (I know--waaaay too early to be thinking of it right? But apparently we only have a month of school left or a bit more) I never realized how much I love Christmas. I actually used to think I hated it. Except I always love buying presents for people. It's definitely gonna be different!
      Oh! And the taxi driver on the way home was awesome. I love cabbies. Tonio and Jhoselyn were fighting and running around and wouldn't get in the cab so the cabbie was a good sport and drove the rest of us around laughing and talking about young love and life and such while we waited for them to calm down so we could go home from el centro hahaha kinda funny :P

      Tuesday - Tuesday was Johanna's birthday, and so we all went to her host family's house to celebrate (the AFS volunteers Jose, Zoraida and Audrey tambien). The only one who couldn't make it was Mona. She's 15 and her mom's a little crazy, and her sister never goes out so. :S Nancy, on the otherhand is finally starting to trust me a bit more :) Anyways, I gave Johanna some of the fudge you guys sent me (of which we're devouring way too quickly!) and it was a super good time. Us AFSies are sooo tight. I think going through such a crazy and often hard and frustrating experience like this has automatically brought us closer together. We've all gone through similar and different levels of bizarrity and it's so nice to have people of a slightly more similar culture and mindset to talk with! We're already planning future get-togethers after Peru! I've always been planning on going to Europe to travel, either before University or after or take a year of general studies first and then travel, then go back, who knows. Anyways, Louise really wants me to (and I also suuuuuperly want to) go to her home city Gents, Belguim for one of the most amazing music festivals in the world apparently, in July or August of 2011 or 2012. She's seen Coldplay 3 times, the Killers, a thousand bands- I can't even remember all of them but yeah! That would be SO FREAKING AWESOME!!! And I could stay with her and we'd meet up with Laetitia and Emily and probably Johanna, Clemens and Ondine as well, not to mention the 17 other Belgians in Peru right now with AFS (oooh Europe, they all live so close together!) She also wants to travel to London, and Ondine has invited us all to her cottage in the countryside of France for a couple weeks of backcountry powder skiing/snowboarding one year in Decemberish!! Omg I'm such a dreamer, but it would be soooo awesome!!! I'll have to work for some moouuuulah but dude. Sweet. And I told Ondine and Liam (my friend from New Zealand) that we can totally meet up when they come adventuring to Canada in the next few years or whenever. I'm going to cry when I leave this place and these people . . . Amazing. Louise and I were a bit teary even thinking about it! It feels like we've known eachother for so much longer...

      Miercoles (which, I found out, is when they WANT to say Mierda, haha) - Can't remember much, even though it was yesterday, except that I nearly broke down again in colegio. It's been happening a lot. There'es something about constant buye (noise) and screaming over top of eachother in "conversations and discussions" that I can't handle. I'm not sure why it affects me so much, but I am finding it more and more difficult to be around. Today I had to leave the classroom during one of their screaming, knives-in-your-ears sessions because I was literally about to cry. How stupid is that. My head and ears hurt so bad and it's just toooo much. It's totally unnecessary, and it's totally just part of their culture. Even the teachers do it. They can't have a normal conversation without getting worked up and yelling and interrupting eachother. It's always whoever talks the loudest and fastest. But they all try to talk over everybody at the same time, all the time. Or yell at eachother to get attention. Very impatient. I just feel smothered and can't even think or work or breathe. Super hard to get used to, not sure why it makes me so teary so quickly. :S
      It's also kind of weird but I've been SUPER zoned out for the past two weeks or so. Always totally out of it when I'm in class... "afuera" ... on the moon... up in my head and toootally spaced out. For some reason I find it super hard to focus on the real world and I'm just always thinking or pondering about something, or even just not thinking at all. But I never get bored, which is weird. I can be totally content just left with my head. But it'd be nice if I could learn to "zone in" once in awhile. I don't wanna turn into one of those super spacey weirdos who are annoying because it's hard to get their attention when they're always in lalaland! hahahaaa yeah.

      My Peruvian "prom" is on December 17th. Oh my god hahahah so now I have to find a "pareja" (partner) to go with me. It's a big deal; there's no option of not having a date (I tried that. Kinda avoiding this...). Then there's going to be dance rehearsals 3 times a week for some big fancy dance thing and all this craaaazy stuff. Eeek!! And then we have to have the same colour dress as our partner's outfit or tie or whatever and coordinate stuff and ayaaaaai. This is so weird.

      Also. I'm not sure why, but I still laugh hysterically everytime I see an armed policeman on a mountain bike hahahaha

Post Twoo

     On Sunday we slept in for once (til 10, usually we're not allowed to that long) and then Jhoselyn and I cooked a yummy fried breakfast of sausages and huevos (eggs) and pan and some super rich hot chocolate type drink. And bananas. I've influenced this family to start eating more fruit hehe and they also eat more salad now :D Gotta get my veggies in. And then I spent way too much time on the computer trying to resize photos one by one (I'm going to try that other site later, thanks pop) and then we did chores and cleaned our room and I accidentally broke the blender, so I'm going to buy Nancy a new one. :S Uggh I felt so bad! I put it in the sink to dry and then turned around and CRASH. It fell. My bad. Aahhh!! Then I just wrote in my journal (hoooooly do I write a lot these days) and did a bit of homework, which I really haven't been doing enough of and should probably start doing so. OH and I taught Jhoselyn how to make hemp bracelets.

      Just after 7pm Jhoselyn and I were invited to her ex boyfriend Edsun's house for torta (cake) from his sister's 15th birthday party the night before (we didn't think we'd have permission to go because we'd been out all day). Here the 15th bday of a girl is HUGELY celebrated. It's this great big fancy-dress formal type deal in a different "locale" place with music and dancing and everybody in the world goes to them. I think it's like the celebration of being a woman. Guys only celebrate 18 like that. But yeah, super big things here. People who don't even know the kid are often invited, or friends of friends of friends haha. Apparently it was super awesome and we missed out, but there was 2 cakes' worth of torta left over and so we went over and brought her a present and hungout for a bit with her brother and her super drunk uncle. It was HILARIOUS. Until he came I was kinda bored because Edsun and Jhoselyn were talking about other things and blaa and then down the stairs came his uncle, who is a super funny guy. He really loves art and music and culture and puts a lot of value into the arts. We talked about Picasso, the Group of Seven, Jimi Hendrix, Insomnium ( a metal band haha) and a bunch of stuff. And my paint splattered Jackson Pollock-inspired jeans that I left at home in Canada hahaha. It was fun; I was very very entertained by that man. Also because him and the father and the rest of the adults had been drinking. We put some music on and had a jolly good time, even though I mostly talked to the adults hahah. That always happens, where I end up having hilariously interesting conversations with all the adults of the crowd whenever there are any. Anyways :P Then the uncle got too drunk and kept hitting on me and so we left at around 10pm ( a little too late for a school night in this house. Nancy was fine but I think the father is super angry about it.... :S!!) He never gets mad at me though, only with Jhoselyn or Fran. I think I need to tell him that that isn't fair to his daughters, and right now I am his daughter too and shouldn't be given special treatment.

      Then today Nancy pulled me out of colegio once again and we made our way to el centro, where Jorge was working at the post office! YES!! I hadn't thought it was worth trying again and was ready to just wait for my passport to come one day, but Nancy was determined and so off we went. And today, after a month in Peru, we got my package!!! THANKS FAMILY!!! I LOVE YOU!! AAwww it was so thoughtful, everybody loves their gifts! The shoes fit Jhoselyn like a glove..or a shoe... and she looooves them. Two of the shirts fit Nancy really well, and Junior and Mario (the poppa) also love their shirts and hat. Little Gabo loved his lego car (and boxboard box it came in) and I gave the hand creams to Soledad (their cousin, who also lives with us!) Thank you so much family, we're all going to share the candy and they said many many many MANY thank yous. I am suuuuuper super content. Gracias :) And Talia's little artistic doodles were loved by all :)

      Also, I still am going to find out more about the other post office, so hold up a little bit, but it's apparently better to put only MY FULL NAME on the package, and not Nancy's or anyone else's at all. This way (up until six months) I don't have to pay any money to collect my package. :) nice. Oh and if you ever send more clothes, just write clothes, apparently it's prohibited to put "used" clothes. Didn't catch why exactly. Anywhoo toooodlooo

<333

Casma y Tortugas !!

     Saturday I failed to rise on time for Colegio (where nothing was done, because it's Saturday, and usually that means we fart around and watch a movie and go eat afterwards and then play volleyball. And next time I'm supposed to bring my violin-- OH and nobody was there on Friday when I went looking for the musical group, so I just meditated) so instead, I went with Jhoselyn and our friend Helen to Casma, which is a cute little towny type place "of eternal sol" about 45minutes away from Chimbote. I thought we were just going to the beach, which is about 20min away, but Casma was just another 20 so we went there and ate a super expensive lunch at some little farmy type thing. It was a super quiet little town and I really liked it. I wish we had more time to explore it but we only got there around 12:30 and yeah. Then we went and explored a super fancy (Peru standards) hotel with a swimming pool (that we weren't allowed to swim in), a guinea pig pen (lunchtime..) and nice courtyard type things. There was bamboo and a bunch of other cool plants growing too.

      Then we saw a sign that said only 3 soles for a ride to Tortugas beach, so we hopped into a crowded hippie van with a bunch of others just in time and off we went. It was suuuper hot. The beach was awesome! I wish we'd stayed longer so I could have gone swimming hehe and we had the whole beach to ourselves other than some creepy old fishermen (maybe I wouldn't have gone swimming anyways...:P) I found a bit of Peruvian beach glass and saw a super awesome Pelican. I dunno why but Pelicans are sooo freaking cool! Not sure why I capitalized Pelicans three times... Hahahahaha but just after we arrived, Andre called Jhoselyn and said he had free tickets for us for the professional soccer match at the stadium in Chimbote! It was 3:30 and the game was going to start at 4pm, so we raaaaan to the road and asked for a car to Chimbote. BUT apparently the only cars went back the OPPOSITE DIRECTION to Casma. So we spent our last 9 soles for a 20min trip back to Casma. I had 10 centimetos left for the 6soles trip to Chimbote, Helen had 2 soles, and Jhoselyn had 5soles. Crap! We definitely hadn't known the food was going to be so expensive. What idiots we were though hahahaha anyways.
       We hopped into another van on our way to Chimbote (thank god you don't have to pay ahead) and were frantically whispering in the back to try and figure out how we were going to pay. We had our 12soles bottle of wine from lunch that we hadn't drank, but didn't think the driver would accept it in a water bottle... so Jhoselyn called Fran on her Nextel and we were going to ask her to bring the rest of our trip fee to Plaza Mejor to pay the cabbie, but while we were talking to her the battery died! So then she borrowed someone else's Nextel battery and called Helen's mom, who graciously brought us the extra 11 or whatever soles needed to pay the poor driver, who hadn't known until we asked him to stop at Plaza Mejor. Hoof! Close call.

        By then it was 4:35 and Jhoselyn and I raaaaced to her house to grab my bank card, raaaaced to the bank to take out money (Andre had to sell the tickets and couldn't leave his seat to give them to us at halftime) and then raaaaaced to the Stadium for the second half of the soccer game between San Martin and Jose Galvez. It was awesome!!! We bought some super cheap Cristal jerseys (the good lookin guys we saw in el centro) and laughed pretty hard because they weren't playing and are apparently the crappiest team of Peru! Hahahaha that's what you get. Anyways. Raced around trying to find the correct entrance but they were all closed! So we ran to the stairs and Jhoselyn sweet talked the guard into letting us up and into the PRIVATE, CLUB MEMBERSHIP, YEAR ROUND PASSES ONLY SUITES!! Awesome. Instead of concrete bleachers we got real seats and the best birds' eye view of the stadium, next to the guys that were filming the game. Man I love how spanish futbol game announcers scream hahaha! It was cool. The stadium is HUUUGE. I think all of Whitehorse could fit inside nice and snug. More. And there were tons of people walking around selling various delicious goodies and hot foods and cold drinks and everything. We sat down about 3 minutes before the start of the second half, still an empate, 0-0. We didn't end up getting to sit with Andre, Fummer, Tonio y Fercho though because they didn't get the awesome seats (which we were supposed to have to pay waaaay more for, but only paid 20 soles, the cheapest price hehe)

       Afterwards they were jealous kept pestering us because they wanted to know how we got such good seats :P It was a super good game, soccer is soo much better live! It ended up 0-0 though and I didn't catch why there wasn't overtime or a shoot out or anything. After the game the reporters rushed onto the field to interview the players, and the security guards shielded the referees as they were walked out, to protect them from angry fans and audience members! Then a creepy old guy who took a picture for us was telling me how beautiful I am and wanted me to take boxing lessons with him and stuff. Yeeaaa no. Getting kinda sick of old people hitting on me. And people in general! Hahaha but the older guys are the worst. Eew. And then another guy outside the stadium wanted a picture with Jhoselyn and I (in our Cristal jerseys) because he thought we were models or representatives of the team or something. Well that's what Jhoselyn thought. I think it's because he thought we were retards for wearing Cristal jerseys! Hahahaha anyways. Awesome :D

OMG IT WORKED!!! Photos of Caral (resized to 25%)