Rallying, Movie-going, and Grocery Shopping

Friday, October 8th

Today is a holiday here. Everyone is sleeping in and I’m awake at 9, so I’m taking a few minutes to write here.

The past few days have been more enjoyable than my first couple of days in Lima, but still not great.

To start, some personal issues came up yesterday that were stressful at the time, but left me feeling better after it was all said and done.

We went to the movies last night. We went with Gabby, and we smuggled in lots of food to eat from the food court. It was the movie about cartoon owls. It was really good. It was in Spanish though, so I’m sure I missed a few things.

I got her to pick me up in a taxi before going to the theatre ( I didn’t want to walk alone in the dark), and when we drove from our house to the theatre, which is usually a 5 minute walk, I think it took over 20 minutes! There is so much construction around our house where they are building a new overpass type thing, that you can barely get around. Our walk home should have taken 5 minutes, but it took at least 20 minutes too. I don’t know how she expected me to get to the theatre alone, because I was completely lost going to and from there because all of the streets I normally use were completely closed off. I don’t even know if I will be able to walk there alone unless they open up the old streets. I also can’t cab home from anywhere while it’s like this, because I wouldn’t have a clue how to direct taxis to my house anymore.

We saw another movie earlier this week too. With Victor, on Tuesday. It was with Sarah Michelle Gellar. A horror movie. It was weird. The best part was the nachos I ate!

Let’s see…Monday night I went out with Laura. She was almost an hour late, so I got gawked at for an hour by every single person who walked by the hospital (where I was meeting her). That wasn’t fun.

Then she took me to her house to meet people, and then to a political rally. It was for the party “Fuerza Social,” a left wing group whose leader Susana Villarán ended up winning the election. It was pretty awful being a person who knows nothing about Peruvian politics, knew no one there other than her, and tries to avoid all political events while traveling. Laura left me for quite a while to go with the mayor while she was making a speech, so I was left alone for a long time, in a huge crowd of strangers. We stood there outside a building for over 4 hours straight! Finally, I told her I had to leave and she sent me home with some guy she’s friends with. Luckily I made it home alright. I got home around 10pm, exhausted and starving. I couldn’t get the door unlocked with my stupid key, and the friend had to help me and it took us both forever to finally get the door open.

On Wednesday, Gabby took me to the grocery store. That went well. We looked for the notebooks that I love that they sell there (the brand name is “Andes”), but could only find huge expensive ones, so I’ll have to try that again later. I bought 2 big (surprisingly expensive) cans of instant coffee for my sister there too (she hates instant coffee, but loves this kind!). And I got the food I needed. Except that I forgot to get milk and used up the last of my milk the next morning when I made crepes. So now I need to go again! But the roads filled with construction are too crazy to navigate, so I’m going to have to ask the poor girl to go with me again! I’d like to browse the mall a bit too and check out some purses and see if the notebooks are sold in a stationary-type store I saw there.

So, I made crepes. I filled them with strawberries (which I meticulously cut the outsides off of to avoid disease) and yogurt (the liquidy creamy kind from here). Delicious, but rather time-consuming.

Now I want to have the same breakfast again, but I don’t want them to see me peeling strawberries! I look crazy!


Note- after writing this, I realized that Gabby had moved from the couch to her bed at some point in the morning after falling asleep on the couch, and was therefore not in a place where she could see me peeling strawberries, so I went and ate.