OBAMAAAA!!!!

Only about 2 and a half weeks til I'm an American again, and I cannot believe how fast the time has gone by...it's really bittersweet. But these past two weekends have been really fun! Two weeks ago I ran in the Lima 10K that was at night...it was sooo much fun! While I was running all the people on the sidelines kept yelling, "Yaaa, chica! Gringa!! Gringa!". Then I went to a cultural dinner show that had native Peruvian dances and music...you'll see below that that was quite an experience. That same weekend we took a day trip to Lunahuana to go river rafting. The river was pretty low so the ride was pretty mellow but fun nonetheless. Last weekend three of my girlfriends and I went up to the beaches on the coast in Mancora up by the Ecuador border. It was a weekend on the beach and it flew by way too fast...It actually was warm and had sun unlike Lima. Of course I got super sunburnt, but it was well worth it! Our hostel was a backpacker's hangout for $7 a night and we met people from Canada, Sweden, England, Scotland, Germany, and all over Peru. I even met a Scottish guy named STUART RONALD MACDONALD!!! Epic! I have a couple weeks left, finals are coming up and Mom and Paul will be here Saturday and I'm sooooo excited!! (We'll see what they think of the Peruvian madness haha).

Things I've learned this week:
1. If your host sister gives you a dirty look when you call her a "cerdo" as you're observing that she's left-handed it's because you meant to say "zurda" but instead called her a pig. My bad.
2. Peruvians have the Justin Bieber fever. Their only cure: more cowbell!!!
3. If you are trying to remember all the houses in Harry Potter, just rely on the British guys at your hostel to yell "RAVENCLAW!!" across the bar. Thanks, guys, I was stumped!
4. To make something like a burger or sandwich "Mexican" on the menu Peruvians just pile on some nacho-flavored Doritos. No joke.
5. I've learned to stop being shocked at anything out of the ordinary here. It's best just go with the flow because you will never fully understand why Peruvians do the things they do.
6. Pizza Huts have a breakfast menu but bagels do not exist here.
7. If you're a gringo, you WILL get ripped off by taxi drivers. It's as inevitable as panty-lines.
8. It's not unusual for an entire hospital shut down for a day because the night before was a festival or something and no one wanted to go to work that day. Yep, literally happened in Mancora.
9. I find hair in my food almost on a daily basis, but you just learn to pull it out and keep eating. Never again will I bitch about the food standards in the United States if I survive eating here!

Me and the other gringos that ran in the Lima 10K. The neon green shirts were mandatory but looked awesome at night with 6000 runners.

Rafting in Lunahuana. Sorry Peru, but Colorado takes the cake on this one!

The rainbow Edward Scissorhand brothers doing their Peruvian dance...doing flips and basically breakdancing with a pair of scissors in their hands the whole time. You know what would make this dance cooler?...Scissors! Scissor me timbers!

Also another Peruvian dance that had costumes...this is a prime of example of how the term "P.C." doesn't exist here nor does the concept of personal space. Creepers!

At the Lima airport before heading to Mancora. The Pizza Hut breakfast menu. Please notice that your pizza, breadsticks, or cinnasticks come with coffee and orange juice.

At the beach at Mancora these 3 guys really had to pee..so where do they go? On the side of the wall on the public gazebo. Absolutely typical occurrence in this country. "What's your name? He'll write it on the wall! Mind your business!"

There are about 15 of these guys constantly walking around the beach trying to sell you sunglasses, dvds, kitchen towels, q-tips, literally anything you can think of. We didn't have any money on us sitting on the beach so we offered this guy some of our peach Kool-aid. I bet you this guy wears his sunglasses at night!

Also, we got serenaded by this guy while sitting on the beach! haha Play that funky music, brown boy!

One of the funniest things this weekend: we ran into this kid that captured a seahorse and was keeping it in a plastic cup. Don't worry, he put it's head in the water so it could breathe haha. He was sooo proud and it was sooo cute!

Then he showed off some more and picked up a dying bird to accompany his seahorse. He walked away like it was no big deal. We watched him walk away, completely flabbergasted and stunned, but then remembered..oh, right, this is Peru.

The entrance to our hostel...our little paradise for the weekend!

Our hostel complete with hammocks, palm trees, a pool, beach volleyball, and running water. Aaaah!

The crazy British guys we met at our hostel that kept yelling "Commonwealth!" Of course, I had no idea what that meant so I countered it everytime with "OBAMA!!!"

Mid-crisp getting a slightly darker shade of white. But check out the Pacific in the background...stellar.

We went to get seafood for lunch (which one of the girls got food poisoning from) and of course there were no nutcracker metal things to open the shellfish. What would you need that for? One of my friends just bit into them with her teeth haha, but Laura asked for something to open them with. What did they give her? Garden shears. Pieces went flying, hence why she's wearing her "protective eye gear."