Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!

            I don’t think I have had a more fun St. Patrick’s Day weekend in my life! Here in Peru they obviously don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. So…we decided it would be fun to show some of our Peruvian friends what St Patrick’s Day is all about. Laura’s mom happened to have sent her a package in the mail with the mixture for some green St. Patty day cookies! On Friday, we decided it would be fun to try our luck at baking!

Our burnt cookies :(

            We mixed up all the ingredients, popped the cookies in the oven, and thought all was well. All of a sudden, I started to smell something burning. Low and behold, it was the cookies. (I think there was a mix-up as to exactly what temperature the cookies were supposed to be baked at.) Our Peruvian friend decided to take the fall for us and try to pull them out of the oven. Unfortunately, he forgot about the whole oven mitt part and just grabbed the pan with a rather thin towel. He began shouting “quema” (burn) and accidently started waving the hot pan in front of Laura’s face who was trying to hold down the oven door for him. Consequently, Laura started screaming “Get the pan out of my face.” The problem, she was shouting in English and Hugo had no idea what she was saying! We made such a racquet all the kids came running in the house from outside and both my host mom and host sister came to the kitchen. The good news is we learned our lesson the first time and the second batch of cookies came out a lot better!

            After our baking extravaganza, we went out to eat at a nice Thai restaurant to celebrate our professor’s birthday! Believe it or not, all the food actually looked really good to me. It was Friday, so that definitely limited my options. Laura and I decided to split a shrimp salad since we had already eaten way too many cookies. The shrimp was AMAZING!!!!!! I’ve had shrimp in the U.S., but this just didn’t compare!

Derek's host dad, Laura, Derek, Me, Derek's host Aunt,
Derek's host mom, and a neighbor!

            Saturday evening Laura and I headed over to Derek’s house to celebrate his host dad’s birthday. We thought it would be best to arrive late in true Peruvian fashion. The party started at 8:30 and we got there at about 8:45 P.M. And guess what???? We were still the very first guests. The people started flowing in around 9:15 P.M. I know I have blogged about this before, but just as a little reminder, everyone here greets each other with a kiss on the cheek. Well, Laura and I had good luck since we were the first ones to arrive we simply greeted Derek’s host dad, mom and sister. However, as more and more people arrived it took longer and longer to greet everyone. A guest literally would start with Derek and then go all around the room handing out “besitos.” I don’t think all of you realize what hard work this is! After one man finally accomplished greeting everyone, he literally pulled out a handkerchief because he was sweating!

The Main Course at the Party!

            The party as a whole was AWESOME!!! There was soooooooo much food. We started out eating what I thought was the only food I was going to eat all night. We ate simple appetizers like ham and cheese sandwiches, hotdogs, these cheese stick things with guacamole etc. We also had a fair share of drinks to choose from. I tried this peach, ice, and pisco mixture as well as a milk, ice, and pisco mixture. And we also had some wine which I thought was quite strong. Needless to say, I was rather full be the time all of this was consumed. Then, I found out we hadn’t even had half the food. All of a sudden the maid started filling the dining room table with rice, chicken, turkey, fruit salad, applesauce looking stuff, and much much more! Midnight rolled around and it was time to bring out the cake. It’s a tradition here that you don’t actually sing “Happy Birthday” to the person until midnight (which is a little confusing to me because midnight starts a new day and it’s not your birthday anymore)! Before we ate the cake, it was time to burn some of those calories we had already consumed so we hit up the dance floor! We danced to some of our favorite tunes here including my personal favorite “Por Que Te Demoras.”

            I felt like a grandma when Laura and I decided to call it a night around 1:30 A.M. Here, the Peruvians party way late (we are talking at least 4 A.M.). Derek and Fiorella were kind enough to accompany us to our houses. As we were walking, a nice little sprinkle started to come down. Fiorella immediately covered her head and kept saying over and over “Que raro!” (how strange). Here, it rarely rains and Fiorella thought the sprinkle last night was “muy fuerte,” (really strong).

            I know I have blogged about how I think it is super noisy here. However, I still don’t think I have been able to get my point across. I thought I would share the following with you to show you more of what I am talking about. This past week in class my professor was lecturing along like usual. Like always, there was construction going on outside the window. The noise started out at what is considered a normal volume here in Peru and then all of a sudden it just got louder and louder to the point where our professor was yelling at us. We actually ended up packing up our things and moving to a different room. This professor told us earlier that very day he was working in the second basement (as in their were two basements and he was in the furthest one down) and he could still here the noise!!! Que loco!

            Well, it’s time to hit the books! On Friday we leave for Arequipa and I am attempting to get as much homework done as possible before we board our 5 A.M. flight!

            Hasta leugo!

            Mary