First and foremost, thanks to all for your birthday wishes and amazing packages! I’ve been gorging on chocolate and Hollywood gossip for the past week. My first Peruvian birthday was great. It will come as no surprise to many of you that I love my birthday. Really love it. So I won’t pretend that I had not spread the word around my town since day one. In fact, my favorite opening line in many a conversation was “hey, when’s your birthday?” Mainly so that I could tell them my birthday, and also aprovecharing the fact that Peruvians love their birthdays almost as much as I love mine. Oh, it feels like home in so many ways. But I will say honestly that I had few expectations about spending a birthday in such a foreign environment. While we didn’t have a rockin’ party, my family did fix me one of my favorite meals as a birthday lunch and invited some of my site friends (yes, new development, I think I might have some friendships in the works!) over for an afternoon turned evening turned night sitting outside with a few cervezas. And this came on the heels of a rockin’ good time in the capital city with some of the coolest Peace Corps kids I know. All in all, a success.
A few random, but fun, facts about my life -- just in case there’s a “Jessica’s Peruvian Life” category at your next neighborhood trivia night. You never know…this blog could be going viral.
• I have two pet spiders that I’ve named Charlotte and Wilbur. They’re good companions as they catch pesky fruit flies and no-see-ums. Though I was slightly alarmed when something fell on my head in the middle of the night. Luckily it was only some burning sugarcane blowing in through the hole in my roof.
• My host dad, for reasons still unclear to me, legally changed his birthday a few years ago. It’s now the same day as my host brother’s. I’m guessing it’s to save on birthday party costs.
• My family recently installed a satellite dish. We don’t have a refrigerator, sink, kitchen or complete roof, but we have 300+ channels.
• I’ve started a please and thank you campaign. So far the only active participant is me, but a few days ago my 6-year-old host nephew asked why I say thank you so many times, so at least someone is noticing. Change happens on a small scale, one family at a time.
• My family (excluding me) bathes in a stream behind our house.
• My host sister and some friends organized a Halloween bash for the town. It was held directly outside my window, complete with a 1993 sound system that had my windows rattling until 5am.
• Nov. 1 is Día de los Muertos, so we spent several hours at the cemetery along with the rest of the town in the blazing hot sun. On four hours of sleep (see above), the chicha (homemade corn liquor – sounds gross but, like everything else in this country, it’s growing on me) at the after party threatened to do me in, but my nephew (age 6) took the prize for drunkest. He told my host mom he wanted to be drunk; she laughed and passed him a full glass.
• Yesterday a woman I’d never seen before told me I was getting fat. Today a woman at the complejo told me I’ve lost too much weight and I should eat more. I receive daily comments about getting tanner (I’m standing by a tried and true Southernism: tan fat is better than pale fat). No one likes my red sunglasses but they love my blue eyes. It’s a constant free-for-all on Jessica’s physical appearance…I’m waiting for my picture to show up on the cover of Peru US Weekly: “Gringa Está Engordando!”
• I’m starting a Young Entrepreneurs club at the local school. Of the roughly 150 secondary students I presented the idea to, 60 signed up. Of those 60, about 25 came to the first meeting. Of those 25, 23 laughed out loud when I mispronounced words. Oh, the joys of teenagers around the world.
• Favorite Spanish word of the week: bufanda (scarf). Hearing men talk about their bufandas just sounds silly.
OK, enough talk. Let’s see some proof!
Um, yeah, so I'm having some technical difficulties with the pictures. I will try to upload photos at a later date. Sorry! Just really want to keep you all guessing - what does Peruvian Jess really look like?!?
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