The next morning, Kate and I got up and finished our letters. I ran across the street to get some photos printed to send home, then I ran to Serpost again to send them out. I met up with Ellie, Jennifer, Kate and Chris (Perú 17) at Serpost and we headed over to Anita's to get breakfast. Laura, a super sweet 16er, met us at Anita's, and it was so great to see her. Almost all the 16ers had gone home for Christmas, and we hadn't seen them in almost a month. I was sort of surprised by how happy I was to see her, and when Chelsea, another 16er, called to see where we were, I was equally excited to see her.
I was also excited for breakfast...
When you order food in Perú, you CAN'T customize it in any way at all. They always mess it up. For example, if you want the hamburger without tomatoes, good luck. It's a hard adjustment to make when you first get to Perú because you're in denial that all the restaurants in an entire country are incapable of making something exactly to your liking. Volunteers always talk about how much trouble they had at restaurants when their families came to visit, and how it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore. Well, this morning at Anita's, I thought I'd push the envelope and I asked for them to put cheese on top of my scrambled eggs. It came with chunks of unmelted cheese on top of it, but I honestly didn't really mind, and the whole table was dumbfounded, because they had all laughed at me when I tried to get my eggs with cheese. It was a very exciting moment, and I took it as a good sign.
We walked down to the paredero, kind of the same thing as a bus stop but it's usually for combi's (big vans), or mototaxis. It was raining and slick cement sidewalk is about the only thing my shoes don't stick too and I was shuffling along. We all got in a combi and headed to Bambamarca, which is up one side of a mountain and in the valley on the other side. It's an hour of switch backish type roads. I popped a preemptive dramamine and climbed into the combi.
We had a fun time chatting all together on the way to Bambamarca. It's unusual that you are surrounded by friends in a combi, usually it's someone who has never heard of deodorant and has no qualms about sleeping all over you and slamming all their body weight against you when the combi turns tight corners at a completely unsafe speed.
About halfway through our abnormally pleasant trip, someone from the back of the combi called "bolsita?" Bolsita, means "little bag", or in this case, "vom bag". A couple little pink bags were ripped off a stash from the dashboard and handed back. I told everyone I was sorry, but I'm an empathetic vommer, and I needed to put my headphones in because I couldn't listen to someone else throw up. I put on my head phones, and tried not to think of that boat ride Jamey and I took with Mom once, a long time ago, and how he vomited and I immediately followed. I also started breathing through my mouth.
We made it to Bambamarca alright, we picked up Diamond, drove around looking for other passengers for a while and then finally headed off to Cajamarca. It was raining, and there was a lot of fog, but our driver went careening around corners anyways. I tried not to watch. Kate rated the "Pucker factor" at about an 8 out of 10. "Pucker factor" is when you are so freaked out you pinch your butt cheeks together hahahha. Peace Corps humor is inevitably filthy. I apologize to those of you at home with a bit more delicacy than we can muster out here in Perú.
About an hour later, dramamine drousyness hit me like a kick to the head and I fell in and out of sleep.
We finally got into town, couldn't find any taxis that would take us to our hostel for the price they charge everyone who doesn't look foreign. We kept telling people we lived here and we know how much it should cost. Sometimes they just smile at you, because they know you know they're trying to rip you off. It drives me crazy when they smile at me like that.
We finally found someone to take us to our hostel, and when we got there and started climbing the stairs to our room, we all started tripping because almost all the steps were different heights! One of them was a good foot and a half and we all sort of fell over with our stuff on that step. After hanging out for a bit, we decided to go to the mall. It is sort of sad that the mall feels familiar in a way, or maybe it's just nice to see new things that are clean and shiny.
I bought myself a husband pillow for my bed because I work on my bed all the time, and my back gets really unhappy trying to make itself comfortable with the gap between my mattress and the wall. I also bought a little tiny rug for next to my bed, and a fork, spoon, and knife. We stopped by metro to buy a box of wine, and then went to meet the 16ers for dinner at some amazing pizza place we'd never been to, where the pizza almost tastes like pizza from the States. It was pretty good, I'll give it that, and afterwards we all walked back to the hostel.
Kate had managed to get all 5 of the 18er girls into one room together, and the 16ers came with us. We all hung out for a few hours, chatting and drinking wine. It was fun to hear about their trips home, what they ate, where they went, spending Christmas with their families. Around midnight we all got tired and the 16ers headed back to their hostel, and we got ready for bed. We had an even bigger sleepover that night, and we teased each other for a while until we finally fell asleep.
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