New Years

Now both Christmas and New Years have passed, and I have been in Peru for over 5 months.  Before I know it, I'll be back in the airport, sporting a blazer filled with pins and memories, attempting to lug a year's worth of crap back to the United States, and will have to leave behind the life I am living here.  It's crazy to think about, and not something I'm quite ready to face yet.

My New Years was extremely memorable.  I had two options: go to a party thrown by the exchange students, or go to a party thrown by a classmate.  I decided to go with the classmate-thrown party, and went in combi (bus) with Eduardo (another classmate).  A little background info: the classmate that threw the party is gay.  And when Eduardo and I walked in, we found ourselves to be two of the few straight people in the entire house.  There were maybe 25 people that came, and of those 25, about 20 of them were gay.  I have no problem with gay people, I'm not homophobic whatsoever, I'm just describing the night, and hopefully I don't say anything that someone could take the wrong way.  So anyways, it was really chill at first, just music and eventually they ordered pollo a la brasa (chicken and french fries).  There were some fireworks outside, starting at like 10 o'clock, and going strongest at midnight obviously.  At midnight everyone went crazy with confetti, party poppers, silly string type stuff, and what appeared to be 'snow in a can' or something along those lines.  I am so glad I didn't get hit with any of that stuff because I had just bought the shirt I was wearing ahaha and would have been super upset if it had gotten ruined hahaha.  They did a toast (I passed my glass along and stuck with my bottle of Coke) and then started the 'party music' (discotech stuff, dance music) and everyone was dancing, a lot of them were smoking (most teenagers here, even if they don't smoke normally, at least smoke at parties) and I passed on that as well, obviously aha but did enjoy watching a friend attempt to blow smoke rings out of his mouth for a while.  Then the boyfriend of the classmate who threw the party got really drunk, and because Eduardo and I were two of the few that were sober and not dancing like crazy people, we hung out with him and 'took care of him' ahaha.  And he was obviously blabbering and stumbling around and not making a ton of sense at some points, but he did say some coherent things, some of them quite nice actually.  He told me "I love when you speak in Spanish, you're perfect, you're beautiful." hahaha and he's gay so it wasn't like he was hitting on me or anything haha.  He did try to kiss Eduardo, though, which was absolutely hilarious. 

And I ended up getting home at about 3:15 in the morning (would have liked to stay longer, I was extremely entertained by the drunk boyfriend) and went to bed.

And then today, the 1st, I had a fairly productive day.  I was up at my normal time, around 11:30 I think, despite my late return the night before.  And I ended up doing a thorough gutting and cleaning of my room, including putting away all my clothes, changing my sheets and making my bed, hanging my flags on my wall, organizing and tossing away anything unneeded (I ended up with 4 grocery bags of trash) .  I felt good afterwards.  Oh and Mom guess what, I ironed for the first time yesterday hahaha.  I ironed one of my shirts haha.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to go to the post office to send out some post cards (it was closed the last time I went) and other than that I don't think I have any other plans. 

Oh and by the way, I forgot to mention, they have a few strange New Years traditions here..here's a few that I remember:

• Eat 12 grapes at midnight
• Wear yellow underwear
• Take a suitcase/bag around the block (for luck with travel in the coming year)

I think some people also burn large dolls in the street....I don't know for sure hahaha I think my host mom mentioned something about that, but I didn't personally see that happen so I don't know..haha.

Byeeeeee!