La calle de las pizzas (Pizza Street)!

It's been several days and I have a lot to tell! I will try my best to be succinct because I know you're all very busy :). I greet you all by informing you that I have a friend from the UW now living in my house here, Carissa, and I couldn't be any happier! I have someone to relate to/confide in while undergoing this difficult transition.

Monday night, two days before our orientation at our Peruvian university, most of the program participants from the UW decided to get together to got out to La calle de las pizzas to celebrate Monica's, a UW student, 21st birthday (note the drinking age in Peru is 18). Prior to leaving our home, my host mother warned us about the jaladores ("the pullers") who would try to get us to enter their bar/restaurant before exploring any others. Boy was she right! The second our sizable group stepped onto the street, we were bombarded with requests to enter their restaurants, some even taking those at the front of the group and trying to lead them into the restaurant. I took the lead and started warding off the persistent Peruvians, telling many of them to leave us alone while we discussed our options. We finally decided that Monica should decide because it was her birthday, which was a great move on our part because she chose the pizzeria closest to us. We proceeded to enter and chatted the night away (in Spanish, of course!) over beer and (for me) Coca-Cola. The waiter we had was a hoot - very flamboyant and chatty, he explained the differences in beer and taught us some Peruvian slang. For example, the word for drinking straw is "sorbete," but the Peruvian slang word for it is "cañita." He then proceeded to tell me I spoke with an Andean accent, which was surprising because I'm normally told I sound Spanish because of my cursed lisp. Guess that means I'm doing something right, huh?

While we were chatting, an adorable little girl approached our table offering us candy, which is a move typically employed by siblings/parents of small Andean children with the goal of convincing sappy American tourists of giving the child money. Normally, none of us fall for it. This time, because the girl was just too darn cute, two of us decided to buy a piece of candy each. Later, after returning, I asked my host mother about it, and she informed me that a lot of Andeans leave their well-established lives in the mountains in an attempt to sell candies and other cheap products in Lima. She also stated that it's generally more difficult for them to live here because of their lack of housing/money for housing, so more and more members of the same family tend to migrate in order to supplement the income. I find this nonsensical to some degree because of the cost of living in the city versus the mountains - every new person to feed is less money available to the original migrant.

Upon leaving La calle de las pizzas, we walked by a club called "Canadian," which featured karaoke and dancing, where the bouncer featured to cat call all of the women in our group and tell me that I had "las mejores muñecas del mundo" (the best dolls/darlings in the world), to which I responded "claro" (clearly). After a brief conversation with said bouncer, we all headed home after a great night out with the gringos.

The next day, Monica's actual birthday, we were going to go skygliding (parapentes) over the Pacific Ocean, but upon discovering that there wasn't enough wind to carry the glider, we were turned away for another day. We did, however, meet an American man named Andy who has spent 10 years living in Lima, though his Spanish is absolutely terrible. It was shocking how awful it was after he spent such a long time in South America. Just throwing that out there.

Anyway, we headed to Larcomar (the mall on the ocean) to go figure out what we should do, and we all decided to head home and reconvene at 9 p.m. to go see Alicia en el país de las maravillas (Alice in Wonderland) in 3D, but by the time we had arrived, all of the tickets had sold out. So we decided to go see a Spanish movie, Los abrazos rotos, featuring Penélope Cruz, instead.

After I had an embarrassing encounter with the woman at the ticket window (I couldn't understand what she said through her microphone, so she started laughing at me...though I did make quite a fool of myself. In all fairness, however, I can't even understand what American ticket-sellers say through those microphones!), we entered the movie theater where we were literally served by waiters/waitresses while viewing our film. We could also order appetizers and sandwiches, beers, wines, liquors, etc, as we wished for small fees. Amazing. Combined with the company and the wonderful movie, it was a fantastic night!