Whatever, man

Hello! You won´t believe the awesome computer screen I´m using... it´s huge AND it has firefox. A rare treat in the land of the Andes. If you´re wondering, I have yet to come across any Andes mints, but I´m keeping my eyes peeled.

The last few days have been terribly full. Sorry I lied before about the pictures. I have a bunch I want to post, but who has the time? I´ll work on that. On Friday, I sent my first letters and postcards (which costs an armload, but my loved ones are worth it!) and I attended my first show by Peru´s best showman Carlos Galdos. Essentially, he is a comedian/ DJ who is pretty popular here. His show was called "Papá... yo?" and the experience was a riot. When we were standing in line to get in (I went with Edson and Evelyn), this guy with a camera came up and shoved a microphone in my face. In rapid-fire Spanish, he asked me a question. I had to stand there with a dumb look on my face and say "no entiendo" until Evelyn and Edson told the guy "más despacio, por favor" (my parents should write that one down for future reference) and he asked me, more slowly, what my expectations were for the show. I said that I was from the U.S. so it was a new experience for me. Then he asked what ONE WORD I wanted to say to Carlos Galdos... Luckily Edson stepped in at that point and delivered, "Whatever, man," a phrase I have recently taught him. Phew. My fifteen minutes of fame in Peru!

The show was pretty funny when I actually understood what the guy was saying. He made a lot of sexual jokes and talked about finding out his wife was pregnant, etc. At the end he started singing all these songs and doing impressions of people which sort of went over my head. At that point, I was already exhausted anyway from trying to process everything. Edson had given me a short slang lesson beforehand which ended up helping a little bit! Before Galdos made his appearance, they played a number of Fleetwood Mac songs which was what I understood most clearly the entire night! The even was held in some kind of sports arena which seems to hold events geared toward youth. There was a guy wandering around handing out controceptives. But not condoms, something you insert vaginally. The flyer that came with it advertised that it is strong during love and strong during battle... Haha. There were also all the usual venders walking around saying "Gaseosas. Gaseosas. Gaseosas." We sat back in the cheaper section, but I knew a few people in the VIP section (no, not V.I.P., they pronounce it as one word).

All in all it was an enlightening experience. I now know more about the world of Peruvian entertainment. Unfortunately, I missed my first skype call so I still don´t know if that is going to work here... I missed it because in a stereotypically Peruvian fashion, everything started really late (an hour and a half late!).

Yesterday I got up early to head out to our second project site in a place called Picol. It´s basically up a mountain from Cusco, but close enough to take a kombi and walk the rest of the way. There, we sanded and painted a schoolroom that was built by other ProPeru volunteers. I got unbelievably dirty in the process but I really enjoyed the work and felt like we were really accomplishing something when it was completed. We painted the whole room eggnog yellow, and the teacher at the school was there to see it. When we were finished, Sandra put up a plaque that said ProPeru had helped build the room, and Mike smashed a champagne bottle that was hung over the door with a hammer. Then the president of the area (the head honcho lady) went around and sprinkled confetti on our heads for buena suerte (good luck). Some of the other volunteers joked that she liked me best because she put a ton of the stuff in my hair!

I returned home to Maria looking like a swamp thing who had just attended a celebration! I took a quick shower and we headed back up to Picol to my Peruvian brother Willbur´s house. It was Eduardo´s birthday party! He turned four the other day, so they had all of his little friends over to dance to silly songs in Spanish. There was also a clown and a TON of sweets and junk food. It was pretty hard to resist, so I dove in and ate the things that were handed to me (over and over and over), but I put my foot down when they tried to give me an hombre de araña slice of cake. It wasn´t chocolate, and Peruvians just don´t do cake the way we do. On top of that I was absolutely sugared out.

It reminded me of Corey because Eduardo is obsessed with Hombre de araña (SPIDER MAN) and there were a lot of spiderman themed items. I ate some kind of weird mousse that came in a little plastic tub with a spiderman spoon. For the girls they had Barbie stuff and lipstick. Valeria, Eduardo´s older sister (age 6), is a little prima donna. She put on the lipstick and she already has some killer hip dance moves (Peruvians are just born with it). She´s pretty funny. She´s started to warm up to me, so we have fun together. I met little Estrellita for the first time last night. She´s their little sister, and I think she´s almost 2. She was adorable. She refused to play the games and much preferred to sit in Maria´s lap with candy in her mouth and a pout on her face. The whole time, Edson and Evelyn were walking around handing out food and taking pictures. I have some good pictures of the craziness that I´ll have to post at some point. They played one game where you walk in a circle and sing a song about getting married to a señorita and when the song ends you have to hug someone and "marry" them. Whoever doesn´t get married has to leave the game! What kind of message are we sending here?

It looked like Eduardo was already a mujeriego based on the number of little girls he enjoyed hugging and following around. He´s four years old! They don´t waste anytime indicating gender roles here. Haha. All around it was a very enjoyable time just watching the little kids and the amount of candy being passed around and eaten. It was sort of a sad night as well, because it was Willbur´s last night in Cusco for 3 months. He left early this morning to go to Andalucia, Spain to study Economics. I was sad to see him go after getting to know him a little bit, and I´m sure it was hard on him to leave his wife and three beautiful children behind! It made me think about leaving my family so I tried to give him a lighthearted goodbye. Cuidate Willbur!

We all left the party in the VW bug that I have now discovered Julio owns... This family is really the Peruvian version of the Connecticutt McVeys. I had my doubts before, but now I´m convinced. There are five kids (granted, there is different ratio of brothers to sisters), one of whom the parents live with (not exactly the same situation, I realize) AND they have a VW bug. A red one. Lucky me to find the McVeys in Peru! Haha.

Today I tried out the awesome spider man plastic kite I got. Edson used his Transformers kite. There wasn´t much wind, but we made it work. Now I´m going with Edson to his friend´s house for lunch! Ciao, amigos!