3 Months in Peru

     Today Nancy asked me to clean off every single leaf of every single one of her dusty plants with a damp sponge. I now intimitely know around 500 leaves, having carefully bathed each one of them. It only took a bit over an hour and a half, but, without even really realizing it, I turned it into a sort of zen activity. I'm not saying I enjoyed it, but I didn't mind it and was not bored or frustrated by it. Dampen sponge, swipe, rinse sponge, repeat. It was just something that was supposed to get done and I did it. hahaha In fact, I might even do it again... Interesting.
   
     Although you might ask... why clean your house plants? But maybe the answer is... something deeper.. some sort of Zen koan that will one day lead me to enlightenment. :P I have pondered it but cannot yet put down in words my answer. Hahaha yes. Anywhoo.

     They have a new maid lady and she's super cool. We're both bored often and so we talk and she's my buddy. I was the first one to ask the name of their previous maid, and I think they noticed that because even after the first 3 days, the family has more of a relationship with Kari than with their previous maid Felicity, who left without notice and never returned. (except her last day I had a feeling she was leaving, and she just smiled at me and said goodbye) In fact... I might have been the only one who knew her as something other than "senora". Anyways. Today Kari taught me how to make "quinoa", a pineapple/quinoa/sugary hot drink, and "cachanga" which is a super yummy fried bread pancake type thing haha. She really loves to cook and we were talking about typical meals in Canada and stuff. We're going to make bananabread together :) It's super sad because she is a fantastic chef but couldn't finish her last year of university because she didn't have enough money. :(

      Doctor appointment tomorrow (or, AFS & peru time...next week) but I think my eye's good to go.

Cows

     Yesterday we got our milk freshly squeezed n warm from someone's back yard pets.

     Today I ate a kamote or something delicious that is like a sweet potatoe but better because it's not toooo sweet. I hate sweet potatoes. I love kamotes. Love.

      Tomorrow they're teaching me how to cook Peruvian meals n ima jot down the recetas for the fam back homesies :)

I'm a freaking pirate.

     Well my awesome surprise trip to the jungle tree houses of the Silba was CANCELLED by two trips to the doctor/eye person in Lima. Hooray. That's what I get for sleeping with my contacts in for three hours. But I always do that for naps or whatever! It was only THREE LITTLE HOURS because I was on the 8 hour bus ride from Chimbote to Lima. I even made myself stay awake so that I slept for as little time as possible with them in anyways. Guess it didn't work, because when I woke up my left eye was bothering me a little.
       During the day Thursday it got worse and worse and started watering and got all red and veiny. Obviously I took them out and put my glasses on but by the end of the day it hurt so bad I had to go blind and just have my shades on to block out the light even when it was closed. I have NEVER felt pain that bad in my eye hahaha oh god. Then they all wanted to rush me to medical attention right away and put tea bags of manzanilla on my eye and all this stuff but I was too embarassed and was pretty sure that if I just went to sleep it'd be better in the morning. NOT. Next morning it hurt a bit less but still was blurry vision out of it and jlkasdjasldkaj so I let them take me to Lima. (we were in some little towny thing a few hours outta Lima for the AFS workshop stuff, which was cool, hung out with 6 german hippies) Anyways. Ended up with some sort of inflamation INSIDE my eye, 3 different types of eye drops, pills, and an eye patch. I walked into a glass door. Lima is super awesome and old looking in parts of it but I didn't see very much. They wouldn't let me go to the Silba because I'm the doc's responsability, and she can't let me go off to the insecty jungle where the only "doctors" are healers. So. Yeah. I'm home and not allowed to watch tv or use the comp much or go out or go to school (aw man.. xD) or use contacts for 3 weeks. And I'm goin to the doc again on Wed/Thursday.

GOOD ONE MIACLAIRE.

      Nancy and Jose keep trying to tell me "everything happens for a reason, maybe you weren't meant to go on that trip or something worse would have happened, don't worry blahblah". Yeah..that's just a sad way of trying to comfort yourself after doing something stupid like sleeping with contacts in. And it comes from people who believe in God so. WOW stupid stupid stupid mia hahaha. Didn't even get a single photo. o_O