Tuesday, November 6, 2012

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.

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