Explosions, Easter, and a Gorilla Attack

Happy Easter!! Easter in Peru is a little different from Easter in the United States. They call the week of Easter, Holy Week. They start celebrating on Thursday and celebrate until Sunday evening. Most work places are closed, there aren’t any classes, and everybody seems to travel. My host dad told me that traffic is horrible going out of Lima because most families tend to travel to the North, South, or East. Basically any direction opposite of Lima.

Thursday my host family was gone other than my host sister. Ahnika and I had ice cream for lunch that day and we were so happy to make an adult decision to not eat real food. We went to mass together and it was different from any church I had ever been to (probably because I’m not Catholic). There was a huge procession with way more people than the priest, amazing live music, and people lined up on the sides of the church to get in on the mass. I felt bad for them because mass was 2 hours long and I felt like my butt was going to fall off. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been to stand the whole time. There was also this cute pregnant lady sitting next to us that helped us follow along and know what to sing.

On Friday my extended host family (my host mom’s daughter and family) invited me to go to their pool with them. The pool was not too far away from my house and I was actually very surprised that the place was called a country club! There were different team events and tents set up for the next weekend, tennis courts, restaurants, ice cream stands, conference rooms, two pools, and probably more that I didn’t see. We relaxed, swam, and I ate the best sea food and rice that I have ever had. (The restaurant we ate in was air conditioned. I almost cried because it made me so happy.)

Chaufa con mariscos = sea food rice

Saturday was definitely my most interesting day. It takes me 10 minutes to get to campus from my house and I walked to campus that morning to meet Abby for the day. On my walk way too many things happened to me in 10 minutes. As soon as I stepped out of the apartment complex, a creepy van drove by and the guys stopped in the middle of the road to yell about how great I was looking (I had just rolled out of bed). Then I was walking by a car that was revving it’s engine for a long time, some guy was pounding on the door, and then all of a sudden the car engine exploded!!! There was smoke everywhere and the hood had kind of popped off the front of the car. I just kept walking because I didn’t know what to do and some lady kept looking at me like I did it. When I finally got to campus, I was waiting outside for Abby and two guys walked really close and fast towards me and I thought they were going to rob me, I guess they were just in a hurry (not something you see with people walking around here).

Please excuse the broken egg in the front.

Eventually we made it to the grocery store to get some eggs and food dye. Dying eggs is not a thing here and neither are white eggs. All of them are brown. We decided we needed to color them anyway and got red jello powder and chicha powder (traditional Peruvian drink that doesn’t taste like anything I can describe) to color the eggs. It worked. The eggs all ended up a red color, but it worked! We also made brownies in the microwave. I suggest separating the batter into small coffee cups and not trying to cook the whole bowl.

Side Note: My host parents just made me run into their bedroom because the news was showing a gorilla attack at the Henry Doorly Zoo! I just caught the end of it but he was jumping towards the glass with an evil look in his eye. I don’t think anybody was hurt.

On Easter we went over to Patty and Juan Pedro’s house. A lot of other family showed up and we were also celebrating my host dad’s birthday. We ate some amazing sea food paella for lunch which is a traditional dish that comes from Spain. I got to FaceTime with most of my family at my Grammy and Poppo’s house. All the kids were in one room, all the adults in the other, and my Uncle Brad was sleeping on the couch. It was all a very familiar scene! Easter egg hunts are not a thing here, but chocolate eggs with prizes in the middle are. These are illegal in the USA because kids could try to eat the whole egg and choke on the prize in the middle. My prize was a temporary sea horse tattoo that I had to put on right away.

Most of the family is in this picture from Easter,
excluding 3 of the younger kids. 

Sea food Paella

This weekend we are planning on going white water rafting so stay tuned to see if I capsize our raft!

Con todo mi amor,

Mariah

Random Things

• It is normal for movies here to be in English with Spanish subtitles.
• I have drank cantaloupe juice for breakfast all week and it is surprisingly delicious!
• There was hardly any traffic here this weekend and that was scary.
• We talked about a newspaper ad in class. The ad wanted a woman to be a receptionist that had good people skills, previous experience in sales, a clear complexion, 18-23 years old, and a minimum height of 1.60 meters. This was an ad from that week in the newspaper. I was absolutely appalled and I cannot believe it is okay to put an ad like that in the newspaper here.