gettin´ jiggy with it

The longer I wait to update, the more things I have to say. Well, that´s obvious, but really, all I did was wait one day after the weekend to update and already I have new things. So, I think rather than working my way forward, I´m gonna work my way back. Let´s give it a try, so how things go:

I have danced more in the last four days than I think I did in my whole college career put together. Ok, I may be being a bit hyperbolic, but really. I danced. A lot. And not just like, normal sway your hips, try and pretend you have rhythm kind of dancing (although that too), but also the salsa kind, where I step on my partner´s feet and then get all embarassed and flop my arms towards the floor in exasperation. Yeah, that kind of dancing. Also, the kind where I stand there awkwardly and short Peruvian boys (and one tall one) dance around me and then chant in unison to the beat "abajo, abajo, abajo". And once one of them starts going "abajo" (down) you can´t just stand there. I mean, as if I wasnt already too tall for Peru, then the boys squat/dance on the floor and I´m a goner. And then usually I fall over.

At least my thighs are getting a workout. I don´t think these Abajo Muscles have ever been used before.

In any case, we went to a birthday party for one of Valerie´s students last night. What a fun night. We were served chicken and fries, chicha, sangria, beer, cake. There was an 11 month old baby who was absolutely adorable. AND, the Gringas loved him so much we got invited to his 1 year birthday party on saturday. Woooo, another Peruvian birthday party (I´m sure my thighs will be just as unhappy after that party as they were after this one).

It was quite an experience though. As soon as we got to the house they cleared the furniture out of the way so that the chairs surrounded an impromptu dance floor. Well, I guess it was not realy impromptu. Knowing these Peruvians and how they love to dance, they´ve had this dance party planned for years.

In fact, everything can be a dance party for them.

We had these same students over to our apartment Sunday night to "study". Well, English speaking, turned into Backstreet Boys singing (they´re obssessed. the boys that is, not the girls) which turned into dancing. So the Peruvians struck again. They somehow managed to find a music source and start a dance party. It was the first time our house has ever been hot. And of course, I, in all my awkwardness refused to dance for quite a while (my salsa skills are really quite atrocious). But eventually when one after another Peruvian grabs your hand to pull you to your motionless feet, you gotta just give in. And so I did.

And last night I gave in again. This time, slightly more awkward as it was only me and the birthday boy dancing, but how could I say no? It was his birthday! He gave me cake!

Oh, on the subject of cake. If you have ever have a cake shoved in your face on your birthday, you have never had a cake shoved in your face like a Peruvian. I´m not talking about some little slice of cake. I´m talking about the whole freaking cake. And it was a trick cake shove. Not that the a rabbit was pulled out of the cake, or some trick like that, but Claudio shoved, backed off, then shoved again. And the cake went flying. Amazingly, the birthday boy summoned the little hand eye coordination he had and managed to save the cake from falling completely to the floor´. I´m half surprised he didnt try to kick the cake up off the heel of his foot, futball juggling style.

Yup, that´s the cake we ate, the cake that was shoved in the face and then fell to the chest of the birthday boy who had spent the last hour sweating and dancing through the house.

And let me tell you,

It was delicious.

Oh Peru, you do me so good

Ok. So I know you thought that I was done with the massive amount of updating, but alas, more things happened!

Oh, Peru, you do me so good.

So Valerie had some of her basico students over to practice speaking and after practicing for a while they said that there was a carnival down the street and invited us to go with them. Who knew! A carnival! RIGHT down the street (literally a 5 minute walk from our apartment).

So we went and it was amazing. We are now going to go every night this week because it’s awesome. They have all sorts of carnival rides and roller coasters, and candy apples, and a haunted house. Everything you could possibly want in a carnival. We only had time to go on two rides because it started sprinkling and then it started raining. A lot. So we decided that tomorrow we will go again. Hopefully it won’t rain.

The rides were quite amazing. And by this, I mean that we thought we were going to the whole time. The warning signs were in English and Spanish and the rides were basically second hand rides that America donated to Peru. We went on “The Zipper” and the haunted house. Amazingly, the haunted house was one of the scariest haunted houses I’ve been in. It was really short, and you ride in a little car, but it was pitch black and there was cloth that hung down and touched you. And the things that were supposed to be scary were life sized naked barbies with blood on them. Quite possibly one of the scariest sights.

So anyways, as we were leaving I decided to buy an Anticucho, which is grilled beef heart on a stick. Amazingly quite delicious and tender. We’ll see if my stomach feels the same way as my tongue in a few hours though.

So Amanda and I head home and Valerie says buy to her students. We find out a couple minutes later when Val catches up with us that her cell phone had been stolen out of her pocket. Her student, however, saw this happen, told Valerie, and then ran after the guy. Apparently it worked because he got her cell phone back for her. We don’t know how though, so I guess she will ask him tomorrow.

In any case: I love Peru. There is always a surprise around the corner. Not even around the corner: just a right turn out of our house and straight for about five minutes.

Yea Yea Marucayea.....er...No....

Ok, so I know I just wrote a novel that you are going to dread reading and be pissed that I am writing more, but today was eventful as well. Luckily, this update will be much shorter. And maybe the timing of these posts is a bit awkward since I’m writing them at the same time, and neither of them will get posted until I have internet tomorrow (9/21/09).

Anyways, we had made a date with Christian to eat lunch at Yea Yea Marucayea. Apparently this is a quaint art gallery/café/hookah lounge. However, when we got to the plaza to head over to the café, what do we find? Well, a parade of course! Although, what this was for, we have no idea. There was a cool giant float of a pig wearing a swine flu mask, a giant guinea pig, the traditional Inca dressed people, and a large amount of different military organizations all in garb and marching in perfect unison. So after snapping the mandatory parade pictures, we head over to the café. In the rain. And what do we find, but closed and locked doors. And no Christian. (big surprise). So we decide to eat at a really cool restaurant called The Muse. They have a really great menu (men-oo, not menu. A men-oo is a cheap set menu with a couple options, but it comes with usually a starter, a drink, an entrée, and in the case of The Muse, a warm brownie for dessert). The menu at The Muse is a bit swanky but we decided it was worth it for the delicious avocado salad, and chicken curry (for me, Amanda had chili con carne) and of course the brownie.

This place is very low key, and we chose to eat in the relaxation part of the restaurant which consists of couches with no less than 6 giant pillows on each one and coffee tables for your food. So as we waited for our food, I took a nice little nap on the couch. A pleasant afternoon.

Full of food and tired we returned home, napped, and now here I am, sitting in bed, telling you all about it.

Oh yeah, and we were really excited about making tacos tonight but Amanda just got home from Mega (the supermarket) and said they had no avocados. So sad. No tacos. Maybe chicken from the polleria down the street?

At least there is a new episode of True Blood to look forward to!

Cusco Nightlife Crawl Style

Phew. Ok, this might be a long one.

So last night, Amanda and I decided to have a distinctly different Cuscquenian nightlife than we had had thus far.

We started the day about 5 pm, when we finally pulled ourselves out of bed (we were recovering from lack of sleep from the night before) and decided to eat dinner (or breakfast, or lunch, depending on how you look at it) at McDonalds. Amanda’s wallet was stolen two weekends ago, and McDonalds is one of the few restaurants that accepts credit cards. So we headed on over. After we sufficiently stuffed ourselves, we did not feel like going home (since we had spent all day in bed) so we did a couple turns around Plaza de Armas and up to Plaza San Francisco. We did this trail forwards and then in reverse. Along the way we decided to play our new favorite version of Where’s Waldo—spot The Curly Haired Jesus. We tend to run into Curly Haired Jesus quite often, so now it has become a game. Curley Haired Jesus is worth 1 point, and Brides were added to the game (2 points each). Last night the game ended with Amanda: 4 points (all from Curly Haired Jesus—yes that’s how often we see him) and Josie: 6 points (all from brides).

Anyways, despues de paseamos mucho we went to our favorite hang out: Cross Keys. Cross Keys is a nice clean bar, with fun bartenders. The bartenders like us so much, in fact, that it is always happy hour for us at Cross Keys (maybe this is why it is our favorite bar). Plus, the drinks are strong, not too expensive to begin with, and the bartenders provide almost endless entertainment. (Plus, Christian, one of the bartenders is totally enamored with me and my continual rejection of him just makes him that much more enamored. But he’s fun and has perks like fun friends and happy hour drinks, so it works out. Plus, he is totally adorable, if not a TOTAL player—I mean, he’s a surfer boy from Lima who comes to Cusco during the winter to make money bartending—what can I expect except PLAYER). Anyways, after chatting with said bartenders we decided to return home for a little relaxation. This led to some TV watching and picture taking (on my part, Amanda and the cats were the subject of the pictures). After sitting around for a sufficient amount of time I convinced Amanda that we should not go to IncaTeam as usual (the source of the worse claustrophobia anxiety I have ever had) and instead we should do a tour of all the clubs in the main area, collecting free drink tickets and then actually cashing in on them. So we returned to the Plaza. First stop, Mushrooms. Actually, we made a brief stop at IncaTeam to see if our gay friend Eddie was there. After not finding him, but finding instead, my boss as well as many coworkers we quickly decided to be on our way.

Mushrooms turned out to be quite the swanky establishment and not the crowded disco I had originally imagined. Two weeks ago, a tourist fell from the window of Mushrooms (2^nd story) and fell to his death on the cobble stone streets (rumor has it he was run over by a car right after he fell as well). So, after hearing this story, I had imagined Mushrooms to be a grungy crowded disco. There is a bar in the center with a bottle rack spiraling to the center of a mushroom. In essence, you sit at the bar under the cover of a mushroom. It is really quite impressive, I wish I had a picture. Anyways, one of my students, Yonaton, works there but that only turned out to cause awkward situations. He is not the most invested student and that made for some awkward interactions.

However, after Amanda finished her drink we continued on to the third floor of the building, a night club called Mama Africa. This place we my kind of disco. There were people, but not too many, the music was danceable, all in all a fun place. However, my lack of inebriation, and Amanda’s exhaustion made it a short stop on or nightclub circuit. As we were heading down the stairs we, once again, ran into my boss. Oh awkward days.

We walk out of Mama Africa and smack straight into Christian After some awkward conversation with Christian he decided to head onto his favorite establishment and we decided to head into Ukuku’s. I had been to Ukuku’s once before and found it a fairly pleasant establishment. It has some tables for sitting, a bar area, a small dance floor, and a stage often featuring local live music. However, as we attempted to walk into Ukuku’s they decided to try and charge us S./ 10 (10 soles). Hahahaha. Yeah right. That was quite unexpected since girls, especially Gringa girls, usually get in anywhere in Cusco for free. Perhaps because they were desperate and it was almost 2:30 am.

So we continued up the street and around the corner to a club se llama Zazu. Amanda had a free drink ticket and Zazu we headed on it. Oh wait, no we didn’t. The bouncer at Zazu attempted to charge us S./ 20!!!! Hahaha, like that would ever happen.

So, Amanda searched deep into her pockets and came up with another free drink ticket, at a new bar called “The Shot Bar”. As the name suggests, this bar serves nothing but shots. It turns out the bar was just opened by a very friendly but forgetful Australian (?) lady. So we got our free shots. Amanda choked down hers, and I choked down half of mine. As we sat there, however, who would show up but our favorite bartender. So after forcing the rest of my shot on Christian we continued to his favorite establishment: Wachuma (or previously referenced in my blog as Dreadlock Bar). Tonight, however, no one got the death glare at Dreadlock Bar (ok, maybe not no one, someone is bound to piss me off at 3:30 in the morning). But this time there were a reasonable amount of people that I wasn’t on the verge of crying or hyperventilation.

This ended up being our final bar. Christian introduced us to his friends who were quite friendly. As Amanda pointed out this bar is not only a local bar, but a Local Local bar (or a Niche Bar, (significa que lots of Cusquenian would be out of place in this Dreadlock Bar). So we had pleasant conversation with these Dreadlock Boys (actually, none of them actually had dreadlocks, but I swear! Everyone else there did!). I refused to dance (big surprise, right?) was told I looked Israeli because of my curly hair. Was offered plentiful amounts of drugs (of which I refused—don’t you worry). Finally, after standing against the wall scowling for what I deemed a significant amount of time I decided I was better off making a fool of myself dancing. So I did. It was decently fun, until they played salsa music and then I was so worried about making a fool of myself that I awkwardly rocked back and forth in my from of “dancing” (it seems everyone in Cusco can inherently dance salsa).

Ok ok finishing up. So that was about the end of our night. We danced. Drank. Chatted. Drank. Danced. Chatted. And then fell into bed.

Oh wait, no. We went home, dying of hunger. So as we are in the kitchen decided what to make for dinner (or breakfast?) boom, the house goes dark. No electricity. So we use our gas stove for light. Light our one candle, and eat our dinner/breakfast/snack. Then we fall into bed. Ok, night over. Literally. The sun was coming up.

Tourism Celebration

Well, yesterday was quite an exciting day of Cusquenian shenanigans. To start off, I did about two months of laundry (well, by did, I mean, put it in a bag and took

it to the laundry place—I need to pick it up today). Anyways, that is a diversion from my point of Cusquenian Shenanigans.

Amanda had previously promised some Israeli boys that she had met a couple days before that we would meet them in the plaza at 6. So, being the good wifey that I am (she has begun to call me this—probably because I am the cook of the house) I accompanied her to the plaza. We met up with the boys, had some drinks at Cross Keys (a bar where we have developed quite an affinity for the bartenders and hence it is always happy hour there for us—more on this later). In any case, we had some nice drinks with the Israelis and then pared ways. Aw, right, I have forgotten the craziness that is Cusco. So, when we arrived a bit early in the plaza (as per usual for me), there was a quite a set up there: a stage, a giant float, and people dressed in what I can only assume were ritualistic Incan costumes. When we arrived the people in traditional and ritual clothing were doing a march/dance around the plaza. The most interesting by far were the people in rainbow clothes with amazing masks dancing and occasional running up and scaring people. We found out from our amazing Spanish translation skills of the banners (that people were very bad at holding) that yesterday was what I will deep “Tourism Day”, a celebration of the maintenance of Cusquenian culture through tourism. So after walking around the plaza for a bit we met up with our Israelis and went to Cross Keys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you heard that part already.

Ok, so. Where was I. Oh yes, after some drinks the Israelis went home to their hostel and Amanda and I found a quaint little restaurant to eat some food at. We ate. It was wonderful. We were full. We were tired. We were going to go home. But then! When we arrived back in the plaza, the party was in full force. There was now a band on the big stage that had been set up, and people milling around everywhere. So we walked around for a bit, and then found a bench to people watch on. Amanda decided that it had been quite a while since we had spent some time with our friend Randi (a girl, nay, lady) from the TEFL program who is now living in Cusco (more about Randi later). So Randi met us in the square and we found a nice café where we could watch the party but also catch up on the drama of the last few weeks. Randi is a much older lady (well for me at least, I think she is in her mid 50’s) and she has lately been getting involved in some amazing projects in Cusco. I really would like to get involved in some of her endeavors, but as of now am not quite sure how to (again, more on that later…maybe).

So we caught up, gossiped, and had a merry old time. Then it was bed time. Alas, I had promised Amanda that I would partake in a night of debauchery with her since her previous partner of debauchery has departed back to South Africa. Now, a promise of a night debauchery with me is a big deal, since the most I tend to go to bed around 1, and if someone forces me to stay out later, my past history has shown that I tend to find a nice couch in whatever disco we are at and take a pleasant nap. In any case, a promise is a promise right? So, Randi went home, and Amanda and I went to….where else? Cross keys!

Now, Amanda proceeded to drink many a happy hour drink, flirt with the bartender and become new bff’s with the lady bartender, Rose. Amanda’s affinity for Cross Keys is based a bit on her previous flirtation/fling with one of the bartenders, Jorge. So Amanda drank and batted her eyes, and I sat and rejected the flirtations of the other bartender, Christian. Christian has developed quite a crush on me in the last two days, and like usual with me and men, he is only more intrigued by me as I constantly and blatantly reject him. So we sit and we sit and we sit. The bartenders have promised us some fun times once they close the bar (around 2:30 or 3) so we sit some more. Amanda gets all the gossip about Jorge from Rose, and I proceed to take a nap with my head on the bar counter (I promised Amanda I would stay out, I did not promise I would stay awake).

So, 3:00 finally rolls around and we follow Jorge, Rose and Christian to what can only be deemed The Dreadlock Bar. Now, up until now I have not seen very many people in Cusco with dreadlocks, apparently because they have all been in this bar. At this point, I was in a bad mood, Amanda was determined to have a talk with Jorge about their “status”, Jorge was determined not to have a talk with Amanda about their “status”, the Dreadlock Bar was packed with people, and my Fear of Crowded Places was increasing by the minute. So I stood outside and waited for Amanda to finish her “talk”, Death Glare in hand, er, on my face. No one even dared come near me.

So, Amanda emerges from Dreadlock Bar, a look of desperation on her face. Like I said, Jorge was determined not to have this talk that she so badly wanted to have. And man was she pissed. And loud about it. Anyone who approached her (I still had the death glare so no one dared approach me) would get a question followed by a diatribe thrown at them. The first question being “are you Peruvian?” (answer: yes), Diatribe: “Te odio! Odio los peruanos! Odios los chicos peruanos! Dejame en paz!” (I hate you! I hate Peruvians! I hate Peruvian boys! Leave me in peace!). So, the good wifey that I am, I asked if she wanted to go to IncaTeam (her favorite disco) to find a new random boy to boost her self esteem. So we did, and it was…well, relatively decent I suppose. Considering it was IncaTeam (usually a very crowded and hateful place for me). Amanda found a boy who boosted her self esteem, I had a nice little dance on my own (death glare still pasted on my face, the few people who dared approach were greeted with a very blunt “No tocame” or “no hableme” (Don’t touch me, don’t speak to me). But, I did find a nice boy to dance with who kept a respectful distance and told me I spoke good Spanish. I think the only reason he was able to come within my three foot bubble was because he looked like a Mr. Max Roth. At one point he even asked me why I don’t like dancing, when I said I didn’t know he responded “I know. Because the boys try to come near you”. Very observant young Lima boy, very observant. In any case, we had a nice chat, and then Amanda and I hopped in a cab home and ended our “night of debauchery”.

Oh yeah, it was 5:30 in the morning when we left IncaTeam. Apparently the sunrises as 5:30. I didn’t know this before. Oh the things you discover when you make promises you shouldn’t make, and probably shouldn’t keep either.