uno loco fin de semana!

it was a crazy weekend.. on saturday morning, we (small business group) took an hour bus ride to lima for some language projects. it was nice to get out and see the capital.

we met all of our language instructors at the main park, where they had a huge television playing the soccer game. the park was crowded with people - it was beautiful. right next to all of this, was the presidents home..

and down the street from us was a dunkin doughnuts, starbucks, and tons of other american stores and restaurants. it was a little over whelming to be coming from little old chacalacayo to such a developed area.

as you can see in this photo -

an overwhelmed jimbo and ashley in the background...

who knows WHAT we were doing.

 while walking around, we wandered into a beautiful church. i snapped some shots of the paintings and statues inside of the cathedral. i was so taken aback by its beauty, i found myself kneeling at an alter - think i may have even said a little prayer.

after the first project, we went with our teams to mira flores - via taxi - where project 2 began. when we finished, linda, boston, and i bolted to mcdonalds for lunch. and, yes, it tasted more than american... and dangerously delicious.

we walked around and decided to have starbucks for dessert. such a marvelous day of food and drink!

linda, boston, and i got super lost trying to find the colectivo area to take us back to home base. colectivos could get us home in half the time a combi would. after asking many people for directions, we ended up taking a combi to some middle of nowhere part of lima, walked through a zoo, a museum, and a park until we decided to just forget about trying to find a colectivo and hop on a damn combi for a 2.5 hour bus ride back to huascaran.

when i finally made it home, it was time for a fiesta with my family. my pops told me about it last week.. all i could get out of it was: saturday night - work party - dancing - invite 4 friends. most of everyone was planning on a discotec night in chosica, so i invited courtney, the cobbs (chris and ellen), and zack.

after i got ready, mi padre called me out to the dinning room to help him wrap a gift for the party.. it was then that i realized what was going on.. the wrapping paper said “baby shower” all over it (peruvians say “baby shower” for baby showers... why i couldnt get that from the prior conversations i had with pops about the fiesta, the world may never know).

i didnt decide to tell my friends that we were indeed going to a baby shower until we were on a combi with my folks about half way there.. which, of course, they all thought it was very funny.

so, let me set things straight for my american friends and family: baby showers here are NOTHING like the ones we have in the states. NOTHINGGG like them! the moment we got there, we were handed small, unlimited cups of booze.. one or two of them made me tipsy. there were more men there than women. a CLOWN arrived and started his show.. immediately picking on us gringos, of course.. all in espanol. my family and the other peruvian people were laughing hysterically at the perverted clown jokes we barely understood. ellen and i had to put diapers on grown peruvian men, and zack and chris had to make a list of something having to do with sexual innuendoes..

then more food - and much more beer. everyone was tipsy - including my parents. my mother confessed her love for me, and her and my pops gave me a peruvian name: “ashlita” - or “lita” for short. and then the dancing began - and never stopped.. all of us... even my little peace corps gringos that wouldnt be caught dancing in normal circumstances (my lovely courtney and zack of course). before i knew it, things got even crazier, the quiet little zack became the life of the party and took over the dance floor, my peruvian mother was throwing up in-between dances, and we even caught her hitting on zack.. at one point, ellen tried to show my father (who could have cared less that my mother was puking) the state that she was in. ellen took him to the bathroom (which was behind a curtain outside), pulled back the curtain, and unveiled my mother pooping on the toilet! hilarious! everyone said that they had the best time ever and were super happy that they came to the fiesta instead of discotecing! we couldnt have imagined a better group of PCTs to have experienced this with!

we didnt leave until close to 4am, and one of the last things i remember from that night was zack was swinging from the handles on the roof of the combi ride home. courtney ended up sleeping over at my house, and we slept until 10:30am - the latest ive slept in a long time. such amazing, crazy times... a freakin peruvian baby shower.

and as if that wasnt enough, the next day was the 4th of july. a volunteer who lives close to the center had a pot-luck party at her host familys house for all of us americans. it was nice.. it started at around 2pm. courtney and i made peruvian finger-sandwiches with avacado, hard boiled eggs, and mayo on freshly baked bread. ryan bought a tres-leches cake that had “happy 4th of july PCTs” on it, and there was tons of food for all. we told everyone the crazy stories from the night before and ate our faces off. i attempted to be social and drink some beer with everyone else, but i just couldnt get into it after the night before - so i went home early with chris and ellen. i walked back into huascaran and knocked on my door only to find that no one was home (i have no keys to the front door). so, i went over to zacks house (who didnt end up coming to the 4th of july party at all) and convinced him to keep me company until my family came back. we walked towards the center and bought a bottle of red wine at one of the shops by the park, where we just sat there and people watched. when the bottle was gone, we were hungry enough to head back to huascaran and call it a night.


so, yeah, this week will be all work and no play - im in need of recovering from a weekend of fiestas!