Mom's birthday, Soccer, and Internet problems

           Well, again we did not have internet in the house and I could not right this until now. Since I did not go to school on the 31st and we had a long weekend until the 5th and I was sick until the 7th, everone at school though I had traveled back to the US to help my parents after Hurricane Sandy, so that was quite a shock knowing that I was in Peru. School that week was nothing grand except that our map was due for Geography. I had worked on the map all week and when Geography came on Saturday, I found out that we did not need it because we did not have time to present, so then I took the map home and stuck it in my room for another week until the next Thursday.
          On Friday, I went to a soccer field with some of the other kids in my class. The field was really nice. It was called Poli Deportivo and was actually turf. It is about 30 minutes from my house, so it is quite annoying to go to, but it was a great fiel to play on. Since the last time I played with all the kids, The kids on the other team wanted me to play for them so I switched to Claudi's team. We ended up winning 5-3, and it was quite fun. The next morning I went to play soccer again at a different field in Coto Coto which was really far away also, and the field was not incredibly beautiful, but there were refs and actual uniforms, which I just threw on a blue shirt and played for my team. I played defense the whole game which I do not extremely like, but I had much more action than if I was playing offense. We ended up losing 0-2, but the 2 goals were scored both the first half. We played much better in the second half. Even though we lost it was really fun. Claudi plays goal keeper which he is not extremely great at, because he does not have the experience, but his height definitely helps. He used to play keeper when he was 6 or 7, so now he is trying to remember all the details.
          When I returned home on Saturday, it was around 1 and I had to immediately start helping to get ready for the party that night. It was Mamá's birthday, so we were all having a big party that night. I started out preparing the ice cream cake which was not for the party, but for the next day. Then I relaxed a bit because I was tired from playing all morning. After, I helped make Ají con Ricota. This dish was really good. It is an Ají pepper stuffed with meat and vegetables and topped with ricota. It is really spicy, but good. A bit later, Lucía and I went to a little market to pick up some milk and stuff and then I realized that we had a meeting for AFS that day, so Angela came and we went to the meeting. It was a really short meeting basically just to receive a paper for emergencies, and then we left to go pick up some more items for the party. We got streamers and balloons, and then we picked up the cake which I had the opporunity to carry home. Talk about nerveracking! I even had to get into a taxi and out of a taxi while carrying this cake. However it got home safely and we continued to prepare the garaje for the party. Charleys and his girlfriend arrived at this time and they helped us get ready. Charleys and Papá pulled out this really nice table from storage, and then I put up some streamers and curtains. It is quite amuzing, but every time my family needs to get something from a high cabinet or put something up high, they always ask me to help because I am the tallest one in my family.
          At this time, the rest of the family members started showing up: aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, the grandparents, and grandkids. There were about 25 or thirty people in total. There were only a few kids not including Lucía, Kris, and I. The rest were mainly uncles, aunts. My parents introduced me to all of them and then we all just socialized until the food was finished cooking. During this time, Charleys passed out shot glasses of wine to everyone and then we all stood up and everyone started saying what they were thankful for about the family. This took about 15 minutes and then we all ate. We all started with the Ají and those that did not want the spicy food got Chicken. I got to be the waiter. After eating, we all started dancing and I started playing cards with the other kids and Kevin (the youngest brother of mamá) After we brought out the piñata and did the tradicional dance. We all got in a circle and started dancing in a big circle and the first person with the club would hit the piñata once and pass the club to the person behind him or her. Then we would dance in the circle again until that person would reach the piñata and hit it. This would continue until it broke.
          After the piñata, everyone started leaving and saying their goodbyes. Once everyone left just the family, Charleys and his girlfriend and one of Angela's friends were there and we continued dancing although by this time my energy level was basically nonexistent and I was stuck trying to dance with the effort I had left in my brain although there was not much connection between my brain and my muscles. Then we all cleaned up a bit and I went to bed. It was 3:45 in the morning. Talk about a party, I can't wait to do this for my mom in the US!
           On Sunday I did not do much after I woke up at 1. After school on Monday, Lucía and I went to the center to pick up a gift for mamá's birthday which was actually on Tuesday, but we celebrated it on Saturday. We picked up chocolate and flowers and stored them in my bedroom over night, which made my room smell like roses and lilys, so then Lucía wanted to switch rooms with me. Tuesday morning I got up at 5:00 to help Angela prepare the birthday drink for Mamá. We put milk in a big bowl and beated it for about 5 minutes until it was all frothy and had doubled in volume and then  we added whipped egg whites and sugar and beated those with the milk for another five minutes while adding red wine. Then we put this into cups and when Mamá y Papá came down at 6, like they do every morning, we all had the drink which was more like a foam, and gave Mamá her gifts. After this I went to sleep until 6:30 and then got up and ready for school really quickly. I was really tired!
          The rest of the school week went by pretty fast. On wednesday we had our second exam to decide which class you will be in the next year and then that afternoon I had my first soccer practice with a different team at Poli Deportiva. On Thursday we had another simulation for earthquakes in the building. On Friday, I woke up feeling ill in my stomach again, and did not go to school. I spent the whole day in bed and in the bathroom, and then today Angela figured out the internet problem on my computer, and now I can right this blog. I basically just plugged my computer directly to the internet with an Aux cable. I am getting pretty excited for school to end here on December 20th. One more month!!!!!

2 Month Update, Halloween, and Long Break

          Well, I am sorry this is late, but I could not have posted this earlier. In my last blog, I noted at the end that I was going out with my family. We went to this restaurant first where we all ordered the same thing. It is really odd down here, but there are a lot of restaurants that only serve a couple items, for example, one restaurant I went to the other month, only served Pollo a la Braza, which is basically routisery chicken with french fries and this Aji sauce, which is really good and spicy. Well, this restaurant we went to the other week served only Truchua based dishes. Truchua is a fish that is really common down here, so I have eaten that alot. Anyway, my family all order the same thing which was Chincharon de Truchua, which is really nice, because it has no bones. The bones in Truchua are really small, but hard, so it is really annoying to pull them all out.
          After the meal, we drove up to this mountain, which was really steep, and my dad likes to play jokes and start screaming like we are falling, and then Kris always cries and screams. The mountain was called Concepción, which really does mean Conception in English. There was a great view of Huancayo at the top, and you could even see a soccer game going on way down below. Also, the main attraction was this giant statue that you could clime up . You could go into the head and get an even better view. After we left from Concepción, we went to this giant factory where they make only dairy products. They sell yogurt, cheese, and milk, but they are most known for their ice cream. The ice cream was only in one flavor, and that was natural. The ice cream tasted like the milked a cow and then froze that raw milk into ice cream. It was one of the best ice creams I have ever tasted.

          This last week of school was not anything special except that we only had school for three days. We had off on Thursday and Friday because of holidays. On Wednesday, which was All Saints Day, Lucía and I stayed home from school to get ready for the halloween party that night. We slept in and then after eating lunch went out with the family to go to a couple of different places. First we went to the cemetary to visit a couple of graves. This cemetary is not like the ones in the US, because it is basically large walls that have caskets slid into them. We brought flowers and decorated the grave of a kid that I believe dur to the last name was actually another sibling that died in 1990 when he was 2. I did not ask due to respect, but unlike people that visit graves in the US, my family was not crying.
          After the cemetary we went to go get our costumes. You can only pick them up the day of the party and have to return them the next day. After picking up the costumes, Lucía and Mamá returned home with the costumes and Angela, Kris, and I went to get my face painted or so we thought. That morning, Angela had made a reservation to get my face painted for my costume, but when we arrived at the store, the painting lady was not there and was at another event. So now, the time is around 6 and the party starts at 7, so we went to another place in a taxi, and then Kris had to use the bathroom, so we had to make a detour for that, and when we got to the other place, the could not paint what I needed. At this time, Kris really wanted her face painted like a butterfly to go with her costume, so we stopped for that. Then we tried two other places and ended up just buying paint to paint at the house.
          When we finally arived at the house, it was around 7:30, and Mamá was preparing the food to take. So I sat down and Angela painted my face, and then after that we all got the rest of our costumes on and once we piled into the car to leave, it was about 8:45 and the party started at 7. I was a little annoyed at a couple of aspects of the day, but when we arrived at the party, it turned out that they had done basically nothing for the whole first 2 hours and had not even eaten. All of the kids and the siblings had costumes on, and everyone was laughing and pointing out different costumes they liked. Yenthe was a dead bride, Yenca was a vampire, Laura was catwoman, Claudi was spiderman, only because that was the only costume that fit him, Sophie was a traditional Peruvian dance with this giant costume and metal hat, and I was the mask. My costume was great, and I even had to get my pants custom made because the ones for the costume were too short. You may be asking where is Marcus, but he was not at the party because he was on his way back to Peru from visiting his family. His grandmother had died and he had left for about a month and would return on the 1st of November. There was tons of food at the party, because each family had brought an item to share. My favorite item was the Lomo Saltado, or the Anticuchos, which are skewers with cow heart and potatoes on them.  After eating a dancing, we got out the piñata. Everyone got a turn to hit it, and then Yenca broke part of it, but I had not gotten a turn, so I got to break the rest of it and watch the candy fall to the ground. I got like 2 pieces of candy, and Kris was basically hording all of it for herself. She had a giant container full of it at the end. At the very end of the party, Shirley, the AFS director in Huancayo, announced the winners of the costume contest. Yenthe got third, I got second, and Sophie and her sister placed first because the had the same type of costumes.
         

          On Thursday we went back to the cemetary because it was the Day of the Living. Basically we put more flowers and made the grave look nicer. Then we went to the grave of the mom of Papá. I don't think she is really his mom, because he is her politcal son, which I do not fully understand the meaning of. Anyway, Papá's sister was there along with Lucía's cousins, and we paid a guy to make a flower arrangement and then paid another guy to sing for her. After this we returned the costumes and returned home. Friday and Saturday were pretty boring along with Sunday. On Friday, Peru celebrated the Day of the Dead, and on Sunday we all went out to go to a religious site. There was this tree with a knot in it that resembled a praying woman, and a long time ago, some people say that they saw a giant light from the sky zap into the woman, so now it is religious.
          Once we returned home on Sunday, I went to bed pretty early, and it turned out that I really needed it, because I woke up in the middle of the night with major stomach pains. I was basically up  the rest of the night and then in the morning I could not finish my breakfast and stayed home from school. At around 8 I threw up, and had a fever the rest of the day. I took a bunch of pills for different things, and Mamá prepared herbal tea. I went to bed really early and when I woke up this morning and felt a bit queezy, so I stayed home again from school.
          We finally got internet at the house and I can finally right this blog. For an update after 2 months, I would say that it rains alot, is cold alot, and every single meal my family makes has a full plate, like if they make potatoes, chicken and rice, It will be served along with soup and cold onions and peppers. My spanish is really improving, and homework is being piled on. The worst part is that most of the homework is on the internet, and there are often times that we don't have internet for a couple days in row, so then I am stuck not being able to do it.