Sabado

Thought I'd right a little about a typical saturday here in Peru with my family. So today I got up at like 7:30 and at 8:30 we headed out to the grocery store which of course is a lot different than back home. First off, it's ginormous. like a meijers on steroids. We started in the fruits and vegetables section where you put all of the food in bags and then go to a station in the center of it all where theres a guy inside a circle of electric scales and he just keeps going in circles printing off price stickers and sticking them on the bags to price them so when you go to the front it's already weighted and everything. After that we went around getting juice boxes for me to take to school, laundry soap, normal stuff like that. One thing that I'm not sure if we have are the juice flavors they have here. There's like apple and orange and normal stuff but there's also peach (which i hate), mango, and pear. So besides that I also thought it was kind of funny how my dad was organizing the cart like he was in a packing competition, stacking the fruit so nothing got squished, and then he just sticks a watermelon on top of it all! I was laughing a little at that :). After this we headed off to have "brunch" ( yes they call it brunch, not desayunmuerzo or something) with my mom's niece. It was nice and she was actually super nice and I really enjoyed talking to her. She lives in Iquitos too and we'll be heading there soon and she told me to call her when I go and maybe she can show me around or something which was really sweet of her. After this we came home and ate lunch which nearly killed me because I was so stuffed and then I headed out with my neighbor Mafe and we went to a fabric store for her to buy fabric for her Pre-prom dress which she is having special made because she's super particular about clothing and she knows what she wants. I wish I could be like that, I always end up buying two dresses because I'm so indecisive. Tonight I'll be going out with Mafe to a party which should be fun :) I'll get to meet her school friends. She says they all know about me because she talks about me but I have only actually met a few of them so far. I'm a little nervous but we'll see how it goes.

Fashion for Aunt Shannon

So I suppose I'll start with the thing that Peruvian fashion is most known for which would be the chullos, or the knit hats that cover the ears and have like braids or strings hanging down. People don't use them a ton, especially in Lima because it doesn't get super cold here like it does up in the mountains where the chullos are more popular. Another thing similar to the hats are alpaca hair sweaters and scarves. You can find them at pretty much any market in Lima or anywhere in Peru really. An alpaca sweater is one of the things that I definitely want to get while I'm here but I haven't gotten one yet. The winter is pretty much over here now though so I'll wait until it's back again :)    But thinking of buying things I could mention money here. They use the nuevo sol here and for an idea of what it's worth 20 soles is 7.23 dollars. And pretty much everything is 20 soles. Things are priced here as if they were dollars, like a sweater in the states would be like 35 dollars and here it's 35 soles ($12.65) It's funny because I think being here has made me cheap because 35 soles is like a lot to me now! But when you think 12 dollars that's nothing, especially for a really nice alpaca sweater! I've been working on the whole bartering thing too which is a fun time for me and my friends are sometimes impressed when I get a really good price and I give all the credit to spanish class mercado. When we went to the black market I was with my friend who doesn't speak much spanish and he wanted a watch and asked me to talk to the guy for him and get a good price. The vendor started at 50 and I said 40, he 45, me 40, he 43 and we ended at 42 which is a pretty decent deal for a (probably fake/stolen) underwater, light up, adidas watch. But aannnyywwwaaayyy back to fashion :) So besides the people who live in the mountain and use the chullos and the native women in their floor length colored skirts and traditional hats, people pretty much wear the same stuff as us on normal days. People go with jeans, a jacket, basic stuff.  :)    Hope this satisfies you Aunt Shannon hahahaha love you!!!

Primer Viaje parte 2

Ok so second day of the trip starts pretty early and we get in a bus and head back up the mountains. Eventually we get to this place called Colca Canyon where there are condors and it's super gorgeous. On this day it just so happened to be tourist day so there were a ton of people who live in the mountains there selling goods and giving out food and drinks for us to try. The condor isn't always there so we go really lucky when we got to see it a few times flying right by us. What wasn't so lucky is my camera died right before we got there so i could only use my phone to take pictures. After hanging out for a while at this spot we took an hour hike along the canyon which was gorgeous but i got a helluva sunburn which is still here.

From here we ventured on to Arequipa- the white city. Where we got a ton a free time which was nice. We stayed in a hotel which was walking distance to the plaza de armas and we took a few tours while we were there. In the plaza was the government building and a beautiful church which we ended up taking a tour of one day. A few of our other tours were to el convento de Santa Catalina, a llama farm, the mirador de yanahuara, and some famous historic houses.  

the church

the convent

the plaza

mirador 

volcano Misti

llama farm

look out they spit

casa de something

yup i rode a horse. We stopped and you could go to a museum or ride a horse so I chose Marshmallow here. He decided however that it would be fun to take me not to the end point, but to run off with me into the back of the stable thing and a small child had to come rescue me.

After all of these adventures we headed down south even more to a city called Tacna. It's a lot smaller than Arequipa and Lima and is the last real city before you get to Chile. While we were here we also had a bit of free time which i used to go to a black market and buy a really cute purse. There were a few tours that we took here as well to see the city. The main things that are in Tacna are historical sites from this giant war that happened between Chile and Peru which Chile won. I'm pretty sure it was over some land but truthfully i wasn't that interested so i'm not the best person to ask about that. We just saw some houses where some papers were signed and that was all fine and dandy. Besides these places we also went to a train museum, and tried Tacna sour, which is a drink that you can only get in this city. Pisco is a type of alcohol that is made mainly here in Peru but apparently Chile likes to claim it as theirs. Anyway, Pisco sour is like THE alcoholic drink of Peru and the city of Tacna has their own version which we went to go try- with Rotary so it's all good ma. It was pretty good and they didn't make it very strong so it was pretty sweet. Finally we also went to a museum in Tacna where they show old hieroglyphics and where the people used to live. We had to cross this pretty sketchy bridge but it was kinda cool though. I felt like shrek though because it would sway when we walked!

On our second to last day we continued south to Chile. This was mainly to renew our visas but also to see a bit of Chile. We went to a city called Arica and as we walked down the streets we literally ran into a parade! oddly enough a parade of older women dressed as disney characters but we all just kinda jumped in with them and danced and had a really good time. Our tour guide wasn't so happy about the unexpected delay but whatever  it was super fun :)  After that we had an hour to do some shopping on the streets but everything in Chile is a lot more expensive than in Peru. We also went to a museum there where we saw 300 mummies! (speaking of, I forgot that in Arequipa we saw the mummy Juanita that was found on the mountain where she was sacrificed by the incans-i believe- and her body froze into a mummy.) While we were headed back to the bus to go home I ended up slipping next to a fountain and hitting my head on the fountain and the ground. That was a greeeeeaaaattt time. So i headed off to the hospital and got a ginormous shot of pain killers in my arm and some motrin and pain pills to take for three days. I mostly stayed in bed for our final day of viaje where everyone else had free time but it was ok with me, i was suuupppeeerrr tired. The next day we packed up all of our stuff and headed home :)  A pretty successful first trip if i do say so myself.