Day Two of House Arrest

Day two of the strike, i.e. being grounded/house arrest...

The highlight of my day was my attempt to make garlic bread, which turned out AMAZING.  I remembered to offer some to everyone, which ended up being 5 people in this case.  I’m not sure how they all felt about it, but Mishel liked it, which was an absolute miracle.  Celina wasn’t willing to try it.  Fine with me, it was delicious! I worked on various things throughout the day, and by the time I finally managed to get myself to work out, it was getting dark.  The problem, was that by the time I finished working out, it was too cold and dark to wash my hair in the sink and my hair was disgusting. I took a baby wipe bath and cut my losses with my hair. 

A couple days before, at the meeting I had with Don Juan and…Don Juan…they had invited me to a meeting/party thing that was happening today at 8:30 pm.  I had no idea what the party was for, but I decided to French braid my hair because it was disgusting.  At dinner, Celina asked me if I was still planning on going, but she said it like, “You don’t want to go to that, right?”  and then told me it was up to me…  She had definitely made her feelings known.  I sort of felt obligated to go because I had been invited by Don Juan, and I know I should work harder on spending time with my community.  Celina happened to mention that the party would include an hour long Rosario (which is apparently some kind of catholic service.  That was a hard hit against me going.  My only experience with religion in Peru, aside from crashing a wedding in the National Cathedral in Lima about 6 months ago, was on Christmas Eve when my host dad, Samuel, read from some little book with the Virgin Mary on it and I listened to an hour and a half of mumbled Spanish followed by Hail Marys.  I went back to my room to think about it, and while glancing at my calendar, I realized that the town party is coming up in 5 days and there will be plenty of community bonding time then.  I went back to the kitchen to tell Celina I wasn’t going to go.  She said, “Me neither.”