Some funny stuff from lately :)

My friend and I got our Inca Colas stolen right out of our hands just walking around ‘pasearing’ the other day. This lady wearing a bagpack on her front did like a stealth grab thing and took the bottles right out of our hands!

Later the same weekend I was minding my own business drinking a tea and having a muffinlike thing when this disheveled man spotted me, walked away then slowly walked back avoiding eye contact then doing a stealth 360 turn ending with him grabbing my muffin right off the plate and walking away eating it!

Now that its summer in the sierra, my site just completely lights up with stars at night…everywhere you look its pitch black and you can see a sky full of bright shining stars, planets, and satellites. No planes though, I’ve only seen 2 planes fly over while I’ve lived here and you can hear them coming a good 5 minutes before they are even nearby.

Here they make a thick soup called chocoka from dried out corn and I learned the other day that you have to degrain the corn used for the soup only on a full moon or the whole batch will go bad. My friends at site very earnestly told me they call an un-full moon (or in English I guess that’s a new moon right?) a green moon….and apparently there’s a lot of stuff you’re not supposed to do while the green moons out…fortunately most of those things relate to farming so I think I’ll be alright since I don’t foresee having to take that into my own hands.

My two favorite people at site, who happen to each been 1 ½ years old, both have learned my name as one of their first words. Every time they see me now it’s ‘tia,’ (aunt), or kaaaaaaaaayttttii Also, Barbara made me think about measuring time in terms of little people and Diana and Antony weren’t even born when Peru 14 (my PC group) arrived in Peru in September 2009…now they are walking, talking, and saying the name of their favorite gringita. Diana even knows how to cut alfalfa and wrap it in a blanket to put in on her back to bring it to the guinea pigs. I never had any idea how entertaining it is to watch little people learn new things ALL the time.
On a recent trip back to site the car I was in was following a taxi that had been totally hollowed out….like the only thing left was the white frame of the car…no windows, no doors….no seats…only then you see that someones driving it and he’s sitting on a plastic chair as a makeshift drivers seat….decked out!