Mi mama peruana, as she likes to call herself, keeps telling me I'm not eating. I am!!!! :) Like- did you not see me eat that big pile of rice and cooked tuna they gave me at the school at lunch? And then as soon as we got home an hour later they gave me a pile of mashed potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and more tuna. And 2 glasses of juice. And another scoop of rice. And a banana. And a mandarin. Oh my. So much food. She says, "Come." Eat. And then she watches me put things in my mouth. It's hilarious. But oh so delicious.
Traveling here was soooo long. 28 hours of traveling. We made connections in Seattle, LAX, and Lima. We spent from midnight till 6 in the morning at the airport in Lima, "sleeping", aka trying to get comfortable with propping your arm on a hard chair. So glad to be done with that.
We finally got to Trujillo! And when we got there.... uh... where is that lady that was supposed to have a sign waiting for us? Taxi drivers... taxi drivers... people with signs for expensive hotels.... where is Blanca? It was hard to hide Hanna's blonde hair and our gringo skin, so the taxi drivers were ruthless on trying to get us to take them somewhere. After 40 minutes of trying to contact someone/avoid taxi drivers/trying to get help for how to call someone, Blanca finally showed up! Yay!!!! We were safe.
Blanca showed us her kindergarten where she teaches. Then we went home and slept till 3 in the afternoon. Beautiful. :) We then talked to María, Blanca´s daughter who´s 16 for 3 hours, and talked about how much we all liked Enrique Iglesias. :) And we picked up Gabriel, the 9 year old brother, from his school. Blanca's husband cooks us the most delicious food. It's set up like a hostel- I think it's a business they're trying to get going, but right now the only ones here are us and another friend of Pépe, the dad. They serve us the most delicious foods, and it's like a bed and breakfast. Except there's also lunch and dinner. Then last night we went grocery shopping in a supermercado. We happend to bump into the director of the orphanage there and two workers. Sounds like there was some miscommunications because they told us there's not room for us to stay the night there, like we were planning on. Uh... okay. We might have to end up traveling the 30km commute back and forth to Trujillo every night. Whatever. I don't care. It'll be fine either way.
When we got home, I tried to play chess against Gabriel. He's in a chess club- I thought he'd know how to play. Nope. He only moved all the pieces one place- like checkers, but he never ever killed any of my people, even if I had him cornered. He just kinda inched around on the board. haha. :)
Man- last week was rough, Traveling was rough, and then today we didn't have a whole lot to do. i wasn't so sure I'd like it here. The nervousness of the unknown is always the worst. I was very tired from not really sleeping all night in airports. I couldn't hear out of my left ear and my right ear also hurt from elevation changes on flights. My nose was so plugged and sick I couldn't smell or taste anything and I was coughing up phlem. My stomach felt queasy from new foods, even though they were good, and I was on my period. Great. Then, to top it off, sleep last night was hard. I was so tired, but I forced myself to stay awake all afternoon so I could sleep last night. I asked if I could go to bed at 9, and they said, "Sure. See ya in the morning!" I wonder if they were silently chuckling to themselves or something, because at 10:00 a bunch of adult friends came over downstairs and the fiesta began. It was one of their birthdays. It was like those loud latino parties you hear the bass drum beating all through the night down the street in Prosser, except we were sleeping directly above it, and we had to have our window open to where the music was coming from so our room didn't get too hot, so you could hear all the conversations, laughing, singing, everything. So loud. It lasted till 1:00, not too late. :) It was so hard to go to sleep. "Loud" roommates are nothing in comparison. I thought to myself, "As my roommate Cassie would say, 'Is this some kind of a sick joke?'". Haha. I have never heard a more beautiful silence than when that music shut off at 1 in the morning and the voices finally were gone. I couldn't believe it. It was so so so so peaceful. There's got to be dance parties in heaven, of course, but, there's probably also some silence when you sleep, right? :)
This morning we went with Blanca to her kindergarten and "helped" there. More like observed. Hard to know what to help with sometimes when they're speaking another language and they discipline and run a classroom way different than you do. But Hanna got to push kids on the swings and help clean up. Not sure what she did when she was in her classroom. Hanna stayed in Blanca's classroom with 3 year olds, and I went to help in the 5 year old room. I played blocks with the boys for a while. My favorite part was that this girl kept bringing me a book about Princess Aurora's wedding, published by Disney, but in Spanish, and she asked me to read it twice. Once was at the beginning of the day. All the boys gathered around then and made fun of the kissing pictures. :) The second time was at recess. While the boys were running back and forth shooting pretend guns at each other, all the girls came and listened to me read the book again. They loved it. They all gathered around- like 7 of them- when they could have been playing at recess. I myself felt like a princess, like Belle reading to all her goats, but me reading to all my... perritos. :) After we were done all the girls wanted to be dogs and play fetch, so I threw around a stuffed pig while all 7 of them scrambled around on their hands and knees fetching it. Poor parents that'll haveta get all that dirt outta their pants tonight. :)
Another funny moment was when I was speaking to a girl in the classroom. After a 3 minute conversation or so (in spanish), she said, "Wait- you don't speak Spanish?" "Well, I'm trying. I'm still learning." "Oh, but you don't speak it?" Uh.... "Well, I'm trying. Am I speaking Spanish now?" "Yeah, like that. But more like me." Haha! I'll haveta use that as a teacher when the kids are trying but not quite perfect. "Yeah, like that. But more like me."
We're gonna go buy a cheap phone with her at 6 "en la tarde", in the afternoon. I'm not sure when night or evening is. But most schools run from 6 in the morning till 1. Then- is there a siesta? I don't know. Why is 6:00pm in the afternoon? Lunch is a huge thing. A huge meal. For dinner last night we had a glass of drinkable yogurt. Maybe it's more snacky for dinner?
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