People

So, I have been here for just over a month, and I have met a lot of people. I am going to tell you about some of these amazing people.

Mama- She is one of the most caring person I have ever met. She makes breakfast with fresh juice for us, as well as lunch. She always makes sure that I have everything I need.

Papi- He works most of the day, but when he is sitting around the table with us he is so funny. He has this very distinct type of humor, but it is so funny.

Prilu- She is my sister here and I would be so lost without her. She explains and translates whenever I do not understand anything. We have so much fun together, making dances, singing, and joking about everything. She is the biggest Jonas Brothers fan that I have ever met.

Nestor- He is my brother here. I do not see him very often, but when I do he is one of the nicest people.

Alicia- She is my best friend in Huancayo. She sits next to me in class and explains everything and lets me copy her notes. She does everything to help me and make me feel welcome here.

Rosmery- She sits behind me in class and can always make me laugh. She is the funniest person that I have ever met. She has a joke for everything, and can make you feel better no matter what.

Alex (Panda)- He is one of my best friends, he is also my boyfriend. He is so nice, he walks me home everyday and pays for me to ride the bus. He always makes sure that I am happy and have everything I need. If I have to wait for my mom to go home he will wait with me (even in the rain).


Well that is all for now, I will post another with more people at another time, but right now I am in an internet shop and quickly running out of time.

Love you all


XOXOXO
Lindsey

Combi

So I realize that I have now mentioned combi´s a few times now and you probably have no idea what they are. So I will explian them to you the best that I can.
So you all know those vans in the USA that fit like 10 people, well combi´s are a little bit bigger then those, but not much. They have 4 rows of seats. There is one long seat in the back, then three rows of a bench for two-space- then a seat for one like this --_- (the dashes are seats and the underscore is the aisle. So the best place to sit is the front single seat. Because then you do not have to be pushed against someone else, you have leg room, and if it is really crowded it is easy to get off.

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--_-
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the first row deas not have a single seat because that is where to door is.

Ok so now that you know the set-up of these combi´s I will explain how they work.
It takes two people to operate a combi, one person drives and the other person leans out the door and yells the name of the route and tells the driver where the passengers need to get off, this person also collects the money.
Now these are not like in the USA because they do not have designated stops, when you want to get off you tell the caller and if you want to get on you have to flag them like a taxi.

Once you get on, you better hold on because you are in for quite a wild ride. The drivers do not obey any of the common rules of the road, they love to honk at anything and everything, and they are usually really really crowded so it is really hard to get on and off.
Sounds like fun right!
I use one to get home everyday.
But oh yeah, one more thing, it costs 30 centimos to get home from school, in dollars that is about, .10 cents.

Combi´s are one of those things that you learn to love.

By the way I have all of the stuff for my camera so I should be able to upload photos soon!
LOVE YOU ALL

XOXOXO
Lindsey

A day in the life of me

So I realized that what I now consider to be normal is very different then what I used to. So I am going to describe a normal day here.

1. I wake up at about 6:30 every morning and get dressed into my uniform. I put on my make-up (very minimal) and put my hair up ( which is required)
2. I go to the kitchen and wait to see what kind of juice we will be drinking this morning ( I have had, strawberry, mango, papaya, orange, and about six others that I do not know the name of) breakfast is usually bread with jelly, ham. or egg.
3. After I brush my teeth I am off to school! Most mornings my father drives me and my sister, but sometimes I have to take a collectivo (it is like a taxi, but it has a certain route and just collects people as it goes).
4. I get to school and before I can enter my class room we all have to line up into a formation were we say prayers every morning.
5. I get to my classes and unload all of my stuff into my desk because I do not ever have to change class rooms, the teachers are the ones that change. And everytime a teacher enters we have to stand up.
6. I do not understand most of my classes so I just try to follow along the best that I can.
7. Now we do not have lunch during school, we have a half hour break that is like snack time for us at 11:00. We can purchase snacks or just hang out and talk to all of our friends (this is a great time for me to catch up with the other exchange students)
8. I go back to the class room and finish up not understanding anything. But it is not that bad because I have a lot of friends that always want to help me. Before school ends I always spend some time joking around with the boys that sit behind me. Then we line up in formation again before we get to leave.
9. Then I ride in a combi (it is like a really small bus) and walk home with my boyfriend (he likes to make sure that I get home safe everyday).
10. When I get home at about 2:45, I change my clothes and eat lunch with Mama. We eat rice every luch with differnt potatoes and chicken and soups.
11. Then I help clean up and I go to the shop with them to wait for my sister.
12. At about 8 or 9 we come home and I work on my homework until dinner which is at about 9:30.
13. Dinner is always really small, we usually just finish what ever we ate for lunch that day.
14. I go on the computer and check my e-mail and finish my homework.
15. At about 10:00 I go to bed and start all over the next day.

XOXOXO
Lindsey

short, but really funny

Last Friday was just another ordinary day at school. Lots of classes that I don´t understand, lots of teachers that I don´t understand, and lots of gossip that I don´t understand. Now, I need to sidetrack for just a minute and describe the doors in Peru. The doors here only have latches on one side, so if you are on the other side you have to knock or a have a key to enter. Ok back to the story. Well it was english class and I am just chilling and helping everybody, when I notice my friend Jesus is knocking at the door. So I look around and no one is getting up to open the door for him. So I wait a second, then trying to be polite I go over and open the door for him. Now in the USA it does not mean anything when a girl opens the door for a guy, it is just polite and nice, I asumed that it was the same everywhere, silly me. As soon as he steps into the room, the whole class bursts out in whistles and screams. I am very confused. So I go back to my desk and turn to my friend Alicia and ask her to explain. What I soon found out is that in Peru if a girl opens the door for a guy it means that she "likes" him. I was embarrased for about a minute, but I got over it.

There are a few upsides to this story
1. I learned a social rule of Peru
2. It was really funny
3. It entertained all the boys in the class for about 30 seconds
4. I learned that the boys in my class are really good at whistling

xoxoxo
Lindsey

Dance practice

Ok so on Thursday, I was asked by some of my classmates if I wanted to join a competitive dance group at the school. Of course I accepted the offer. All I knew was that we were learning some type of tradtional dance. So on Saterday I walk to the school where we are meeting and I only know a few boys from my class. We are leughing and joking, then we have to start running for a warm-up. At first it was really easy, then after about 30 seconds I realized that there is no oxygen in the mountains *my pace slows*. Then at one point in time I realize that I am barly breathing, so I decide to walk, and the boys that were running with me did not want me to feel left out so they walked with me. So we are streching and everyone is amazed at how flexible I am. :) Then we start dancing, all I can think is Oh My God what did I get myself into. It was so fast with so many steps and I could barly keep up. But everyone kept encouragin me and I caught on pretty quickly. Then after about an hour and a half we had a little break. The boys were commenting on my flexibilty, so I showed them my splits, they freaked out! They were all trying and it was one of the funniest moments in Peru so far. So practice is over and I am exhausted and I have to walk back to the shop.
Well the four boys from my class decided that they were all going to walk with me for "saftey". This was also very funny because they were all pretending to be my secret service and one of them would go ahead to "clear the area"; I was very amused. But the best part was when we were getting close to the shop we decided to play a trick on Mama and I linked arms with them to pretend that I had 4 boyfriends. You should have seen my mother´s face when I walked into the shop surrounded by four boys and I said "Hola Mama, yo tengo cuatro enamorados". Translation- Hello Mama, I have four boyfriends. She just kinda stared for a second before realizing that it was a joke. Then one of them explained that they were walking with me for safety and that they are my friends. I will never forget that!
I am so excited for my next dance practice! Our costumes are going to be amazing and we are going to kick butt at competition!

First day of school

Ok, so people may think that GCS has a strict dress code, NOT EVEN CLOSE! The uniform that I have to wear is so much more extreme! The skirt has to be 2 fingers below my knees, the socks come up to my knees, I have to wear a jacket, AND a little tie thing, that is the most uncomfortable thing in the whole world. I will post picture eventually. Anyways, I wake up early on monday morning, and get dressed, then I eat as much breakfast as i can handle, i was really nervous. When I got there I waited for about 10 minutes before the other exchange students showed up. We had to get introduced to the whole school, and then, SURPRISE, we have to talk infront of the entire school! And guess who had to go first, yup, thats right, me! It was actually really funny though, because when I was walking up to the microphone all of the boys were whistling. Of course i forgot all of my spanish at that point in time and I made a fool out of myself, but everything turned out ok. So I get put into my classroom and to my surprise everyone wanted to sit next to me. I made so many friends in the first two minutes! I did not understand one word that any of the teachers said, and some of the teachers did not even ackowledge the fact that I was there, but I had a lot of fun. During this one point in time when we were waiting for our next teacher, every single boy in the entire class was around my desk, every one! It was really cute, they would all tell me their names and then cheer if i could remember one. :) Everyone is so nice! Everyone always wants to help me and to ask me questions about english. It is really entertaining, because at free time with teh whole school, I can always catch a few boys staring at me, so I stare back and they blush and turn away, It is really cute.
Yes, I did have homework on my first day, and yes, it was in spanish, and no, i did not understnad a word of it.
Each day is getting better and better, soon I will be fluent in spanish, then all of you are going to have to translate every owrd like I have to, HA.

XOXOXO
Lindsey

The market

Now when you think of the market you think of this happy little place with a whole buch of happy little people selling a whole bunch of happy little fruits. Well, the people there are mostly happy and they are definatly little, but it is no so small and the fruit is most definatly not happy. So I walk up to what I think is this normal row of shops, boy was I wrong, you enter a shop and it is like you are transported to another place full of people yelling ranbom stuff that you don´t know and a whole buch of chicken heads being chopped off. Every direction you face there is some type of different activity going on *what did I get my self into*. Mama is watching me, waiting for any type of reaction. Waiting with anticipation and then...just when she thinks I am going to run home screaming.....I smile. Now this smile is not just a little I am happy smile. This is a OH MY GOSH THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING; CRAZIEST; MOST INTENSE (just like the circus) PLACES I HAVE EVER BEEN TO smile.
I can not control my eyes, they are hypnotized by all the colors and sounds and smells. Sounds like, lound banging of chicken being cut and the heaving plodding of bags being dropped and the constant shuffling of feet going in every direction. There are so many differnt fruits and vegatable nad potatoes, every color you can imagine and even the colors you can´t imagine. Every grain, and meat and seafood and... and just everyting you could ever want to eat. So we set off into the abys *clings to mama´s arm* in search of onions and god knows what else. People stare, I am the tallest and my hair is not black. We are lost in this black hole of food for what seems like 5 days (it really only felt like 10 mintutes, but I like being dramatic). Then like a shark leaping out of the water to catch its pray, we emerge! *huge deep breath* Am I alive? I slowly look over my body to make sure that all of my limbs are attached. Feet, check; Legs, check; Hands, check; Fingers, check; Head......head...HEAD....OMG WHERE DID MY HEAD GO!!! oh wait there it is, on my neack right where it is supposed to be, as opposed to sticking out of my stomach, where it is not supposed to be. The whole experience was incredible! I hope that I did it justice, because it is really a wonderful place. *contented sigh*