What an amazing weekend! Saturday was the surprise birthday party of my little Peruvian sister Camilla! In morning, after I got a chance to sleep in a little, I went with my host Mom to pick up some last minute things for the party. We also stopped for some Peruvian icecream, it was delicious! She also showed me how to wash my clothes, and it's actually quite a process and I'm convinced that handwashing my clothes may be cleaner then the washing machine. Plus, I have always hung dry most of my stuff, the only downfall is that things like towels and tshirts are kind of crunchy after being hung dry and I will miss a dryer for that reason.
So it turns out the party was actually in the apartment below us which belongs to the father of my host dad. His apartment is much larger and more spacious then ours. So we decorated that with all the balloons we worked on night before. It looked great. Now the party was supposed to start at 5:00, but when 5:00 rolled around no one was there. This is a concept I'm getting used to, it's called "peruvian time", which guarantees that peruvians will almost always start and hour or more later then what is requested.
As the guests arrived I was excited to see a few of them were accompanied by other peace corp volunteers, so there were 4 of us "gringos" at the party. The place ended up being packed 20 kids or more plus their parents. I didn't realize that the family had hired a clown too, and the clown was MUCH creepier then any clown I've ever seen in the United States, and not only that, the clown had an assitant who came in a tiny skirt and barely a top and knee high boots, and she danced like a hoochie, she served no other purpose. And remember this is for an 8 year olds birthday party. It was interesting. However, what I loved is that instead of acting like little jerks that most kids in the U.S. would have done, these kids loved every second of it, they danced and did everything the clown asked them to do and were so excited about it. They were all so well behaved. And the kids know how to DANCE...they put any of us "gringos" to shame. The entire party was out of control, I have never had so much fun at a little kids party in my life. Me and the other volunteers were dying laughing the entire time, at the kids, and the insane clown who kept insulting a larger woman in the crowd about her weight, and since she was really dark he kept saying she was from Africa. It was unbelieveable!
Some things were very interesting with regards to their traditions, there is a table with finger food, however people do not go up and eat it, the family serves it to you the entire time. So throughout the party I would take trays around along with the rest of the family and make sure everyone had food. It's very different. They also sing happy birthday twice, once in english and then again in spanish. I don't understand that either. Also the family makes speeches throughout and they asked us volunteers to make speeches too and that wasn't intimidating or anything with my limited spanish vocabulary! But I got through it. The whole thing was just great and i had a wonderful time.
Sunday, my host Mom served me breakfast in my room, which consisted of cake from the party, jello from the party and warm milk. I was so glad she served it to me in my room because I actually threw it away! Then, I got together with 2 other volunteers and we went to Chosica for the day and wandered through the open markets and had lunch. It was so gorgeous and such a different way of life. I took tons of pictures.
Since I told my host mom this week that I no longer needed to eat dinner, because the meals are huge and it's just too much food. She now insists that I have warm milk in place of dinner, so tonight when I say down with Camilla and Cesar and had my warm milk she insisted on giving me a gigantic bowl of animal crackers...I don't think she is getting the whole idea of me not wanting so much food! We are going to have to work on that.
It has been a great weekend off, I go back to training tomorrow and this Friday and Saturday I am going to downtown Lima to go to museums Friday and then Saturday we have our first of many agricultural traning classes at Agria college in Lima. This is so that when we are at our sites we can build vegetable garderns in our communities. I am so excited! I hear Lima is beautiful and I only got to see a small part of it when we were at the airport last friday night! So i'm sure I'll have much to report this week!
So it turns out the party was actually in the apartment below us which belongs to the father of my host dad. His apartment is much larger and more spacious then ours. So we decorated that with all the balloons we worked on night before. It looked great. Now the party was supposed to start at 5:00, but when 5:00 rolled around no one was there. This is a concept I'm getting used to, it's called "peruvian time", which guarantees that peruvians will almost always start and hour or more later then what is requested.
As the guests arrived I was excited to see a few of them were accompanied by other peace corp volunteers, so there were 4 of us "gringos" at the party. The place ended up being packed 20 kids or more plus their parents. I didn't realize that the family had hired a clown too, and the clown was MUCH creepier then any clown I've ever seen in the United States, and not only that, the clown had an assitant who came in a tiny skirt and barely a top and knee high boots, and she danced like a hoochie, she served no other purpose. And remember this is for an 8 year olds birthday party. It was interesting. However, what I loved is that instead of acting like little jerks that most kids in the U.S. would have done, these kids loved every second of it, they danced and did everything the clown asked them to do and were so excited about it. They were all so well behaved. And the kids know how to DANCE...they put any of us "gringos" to shame. The entire party was out of control, I have never had so much fun at a little kids party in my life. Me and the other volunteers were dying laughing the entire time, at the kids, and the insane clown who kept insulting a larger woman in the crowd about her weight, and since she was really dark he kept saying she was from Africa. It was unbelieveable!
Some things were very interesting with regards to their traditions, there is a table with finger food, however people do not go up and eat it, the family serves it to you the entire time. So throughout the party I would take trays around along with the rest of the family and make sure everyone had food. It's very different. They also sing happy birthday twice, once in english and then again in spanish. I don't understand that either. Also the family makes speeches throughout and they asked us volunteers to make speeches too and that wasn't intimidating or anything with my limited spanish vocabulary! But I got through it. The whole thing was just great and i had a wonderful time.
Sunday, my host Mom served me breakfast in my room, which consisted of cake from the party, jello from the party and warm milk. I was so glad she served it to me in my room because I actually threw it away! Then, I got together with 2 other volunteers and we went to Chosica for the day and wandered through the open markets and had lunch. It was so gorgeous and such a different way of life. I took tons of pictures.
Since I told my host mom this week that I no longer needed to eat dinner, because the meals are huge and it's just too much food. She now insists that I have warm milk in place of dinner, so tonight when I say down with Camilla and Cesar and had my warm milk she insisted on giving me a gigantic bowl of animal crackers...I don't think she is getting the whole idea of me not wanting so much food! We are going to have to work on that.
It has been a great weekend off, I go back to training tomorrow and this Friday and Saturday I am going to downtown Lima to go to museums Friday and then Saturday we have our first of many agricultural traning classes at Agria college in Lima. This is so that when we are at our sites we can build vegetable garderns in our communities. I am so excited! I hear Lima is beautiful and I only got to see a small part of it when we were at the airport last friday night! So i'm sure I'll have much to report this week!
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