Winter's Coming

Hello all, it's been a while since I've updated, sorry about that, I struggle to come up with things to write about sometimes haha.  Here's a few things:

• Last week, both Paul McCartney and One Direction had concerts in Lima.  I didn't go to either of them, I would have liked to go to the One Direction concert but I don't know, I never really got up off my butt to get tickets so yeah..haha.  I did pass by their hotel though!  Unfortunately, I missed when all 5 of them walked out onto the balcony of their room to wave to the crowds of screaming peruvian girls below.  It would have been cool to see them.  
• The 25th was my birthday!  I am now 17!  That's weird haha
• It's is definitely cooling down here!  I think summer has ended, I stopped wearing shorts a few weeks ago.  Now it's cool in the morning and hot (with sun) in the afternoon and then chilly at night.  Soon the sun will stop coming out and it will get damp everywhere and chilly all day and then I'll know for sure that it's winter here.  
• I don't remember when exactly, last week sometime, I saw this movie in the theater:  It's called La Cara del Diablo (The Face of the Devil).  It's a Peruvian made movie, and it was super cool because it was in Spanish and it was so great to understand everything, even the peruvian slang that they used.  And it was really funny because the movie was about this group of friends that take a trip to Tarapoto (a city in the jungle) and that was really funny to me because I went on a school trip to Tarapoto!

• I don't remember if I talked about Easter at all, well here there was a lot less commercial influence, by that I mean that I saw no chocolate bunnies, easter baskets, dyed eggs, really nothing that makes me think of Easter in the United States.  No easter candy at all really.  I had a day or two off from University.  That was about it.

I can't think of anything else right now, byeeee people :)
-Ginger

School

Now that I'm living a bit closer to USIL, I've been attending more regularly.  I have class Tuesday-Friday (with Monday, Saturday, and Sunday off, yay).  I have class starting at 9 in the morning, and normally have class until 11 or 1, leaving me with either a 2 hour or 4 hour break before my 3-5 spanish class.  I have only attended 2 days of spanish class so far but I think they will actually be helpful.  An example of something I've learned:

'Do you remember the girl I talked to you about?' Normally I would translate this to "Te acuerdas de la chica de que te hable?' but I learned that the correct translation is "Te acuerdas de la chica de la que te hable?"  Or at least I think that's right lol that'd be embarrassing if that wasn't correct...anyways lol.

And one of these days I will buy the practice book to participate more in the class. 

Like I said, my class starts at 9 so I usually leave at 8 or 7:50 to get there 10 minutes or so early.  Then after my spanish class I head straight home, and normally arrive around 6 or 6:15.  I can't walk very fast because I'm still recovering so that's why I take so long.  Today I have no class because it is some kind of holiday, it's 'semana santa' = holy week, I don't know much about it.  Several of my classes are in English. 

I don't know what elseeeee. 
Bye

Third Host Family

I moved into my third host family 2 days ago.  I'm back in San Borja now, closer to my friends and closer to my university.  My family is nice, and they are from Cuenca, Ecuador, but have lived in Lima 4 years.  I have two host sisters and I share a room with one of them.  Yesterday there was a rotary event that we went to but one of my host sisters had a problem at her university so we left early.  Today I slept in very late (12:30, latest I've slept in a long time) and just a few hours after that we went to a big mall here in Lima called Jockey Plaza.  There's tons of stores and brands, I think me and Emilie will take a shopping trip there this week or maybe next.  Anyways, we walked around there looking at stuff for a while and ate lunch there then returned home and I now I'm just chilling on the couch watching Pocahontas on my laptop haha.  I like my new family, I think everything will go well here.

Summer here seems to be ending--I don't wear shorts anymore.  It's definitely getting cooler, especially in the mornings and evenings.  By cooler I mean it now seems to be like 60s instead of 70s and 80s. 

Hmm what else...my birthday is in two weeks.  Yay.

Recovery update:  I still have a bit of pain, I think I have a pulled muscle in my upper right thigh which makes me limp and is concerning my host family.  Also my feet and ankles hurt when I walk or when I'm standing.  I'm hoooooping it will get better with time.

Bye

Recovery

Hi people, it is day 5 of recovery, and I am officially out of pain pills.  But that's okay because I don't have that much pain anymore.  I am doing a lot better, I walk significantly faster (although the balls of my feet hurt quite a bit from the impact of the jump) and my palms and wrists are a little bruised but they just look terrible and fortunately don't feel terrible.  My physical state is probably better than my mental state at this point (staying home all day gets me down quite a bit) but within a few days I will be a lot better and will hopefully be able to start going out normally again.  Unfortunately that will also mean that I will be expected to return to university (which would be fine if I were in my third host family like I'm supposed to be, and would be only 30 minutes away instead of 1 1/2 hours away).  Anyways, I'm hoping one of these days Chachi will be able to come over so we can order pizza and watch movies.  And hopefully on Eduardo's day off we can go to the movie theater.  And my friend Andre owes me a batch of cookies and said he'd buy a mix so we can make them at my house.  So those are all things to look forward to.  I have to keep those things in my mind to keep me positive. 

What have I been up to during my recovery...I have been watching a ton of movies online, like 6 hours worth of x-men (always makes me happy), this morning watched Wreck it Ralph (great movie), today will be watching part 1 and 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  So yeah.  That's it.

Bye

A Series of Unfortunate Events

So two days ago (monday) I made an unwise decision that led to me ending up in the hospital.  I am okay, let me explain.

So I was home alone, getting ready to go out, and for the life of me could not find my keys.  I searched upstairs and downstairs and in my bag and couldn't find them.  Never before had I not been able to find my keys.  I could not find another set of keys.  I found the gate outside to be locked.  That was when I made the unwise decision to jump over the edge of the balcony to the ground below.  I'm not quite sure how to explain the layout of my house...I live in like, weird condominium/apartment type buildings.  To get to my 'house' I go up some stairs and go through a metal gate and pass someone else's 'house' and then there's my 'house'.  So after you pass through the metal gate, there's like a walk way with a halfheight wall, and leaning over that half-wall thing, you can see the ground below.  I didn't think it was that tall.  I did not think through my options.  I did not think 'I'll wait a few hours until my host siblings get home from school and can unlock the gate.'  I did not think 'These converse have no traction what so ever, and the sidewalk down there is slippery.'  And so I hoisted myself up and let myself drop down.  I think my feet hit the ground but then immediately went out from under me and I hit the cement hard on my butt, so my feet took some of the blow and my butt/waist for the rest.  I was kind of shocked for a moment there, sitting on the sidewalk below.  I was barely there for a few seconds, or at least it seemed like a very short amount of time, and almost immediately a lady came out her door (right next to where I had landed) because she had heard something hit the ground.  She called serenazgo (kind of like police here, they're like neighborhood watch people kind of) and within a few minutes there were like 4 of them surrounding me.  They told me not to move, I stayed seated on the ground.  I don't really remember the pain from that point.  I remember not really being able to move my right leg and my waist and lower back.  My right side hurt more, I hit harder on that side I guess.  I got very, very scared.  I thought 'oh god what have I done, I've paralyzed myself, I've ruined the rest of my exchange, I'll be in a wheelchair' and I had to explain to the serenazgo through my crying that I was home alone, that I was not even from Peru, that I was an exchange student and had no family here.  My host mom's cell phone wasn't working so I couldn't contact her.  I called my old host mom and got no answer.  I called my rotary contact to find that the number in my phone was wrong.  I called about 6 exchange students to get the correct number from said contact.  After each 'leave your message' voicemail response, I panicked more and cried harder.  Finally an exchange student from Germany answered and gave me the number and the serenazgo called the rotary contact and said they'd be taking me to a clinic called Good Hope.  An ambulance arrived, they lifted me in one of those flat things that I am completely forgetting the name of.  A neighbor lady had to come with me in the ambulance, I didn't even know who she was.  I called my best friend Chachi and told him I'd hurt myself and was going to the clinic and he left right away with his mom to meet us there.  In the ambulance I think I may have had some sort of panic attack because my hands went numb and stiff and only once I started breathing better did they return to normal.  We arrived at the clinic pretty fast, and they wheeled me in on the flat thing that, again, I don't know the name of.  And I remember not really understanding because they wheeled me in and left me in the wheely thing against the wall and I was lying there, crying, wondering why people were passing me and not doing anything, why no one was helping me.  I don't know.  I was so scared, I'd ever been in a situation like that before.  A rotary man arrived and soon after, Chachi and his mom arrived and Chachi stood by me for a while, and I remember crying and saying 'oh chachi I'm so stupid, I feel like such an idiot, I think I broke my ankle' because what was hurting me the most was my right ankle, right wrist, and right hip.  Spoiler alert= turns out nothing was broken.  And I remember a man coming up to me, he spoke to me in English, he told me "I'm not your doctor, but I wanted to ask how you're doing" and I said something like "I'm okay" and I told him "your english is so good" and he said "I lived in Chicago" and I said "I'm from wisconsin" and he laughed and said "the green bay packers always beat the bears" and I laughed and it kind of hurt to laugh haha.  A little while later I got wheeled into a different room to get an xray.  It was really painful because I had been laying down the whole time and couldn't even really move.  But I had to stand up to get the xray of my waist to make sure my hip wasn't fractured or something.  And so the two xray technician people had to help me out of the wheely thing and I could barely stand there holding onto the xray machine, I'm sure those xrays were hardly readable, I was shaking and crying quite a bit haha.  Anyways, after that, I laid back down in the wheely thing and they wheeled me into a different room to wait until the xray could be read.  And I was there waiting for a long time.  I think I slept a little bit.  I couldn't really move without a lot of pain.  Eventually they told us that nothing was broken.  They gave me an injection for the pain above my right hip (in my back).  It helped quite a bit but I panicked a bit before they gave it to me (I was scared of the needle).  Then I was eased into a wheelchair and wheeled out into waiting room where everyone was waiting for me.  In total, I think I was at the hospital for like 3 or 4 hours maybe, I don't remember.  I got helped into the car and they took me to my third host family because they couldn't get ahold of my host mom until later that evening.  I spent the night at my third host family's house and in the morning returned to my second host family.  I don't know if you guys remember from my last post, but I had said that 'supposedly' we would be changing on Monday.  Yeah, turned out that one of the families was going on a trip and so that was really not coordinated well haha so it was changed to the 11th.  So I'll be here till the 11th.  Anyways, it was the worst day ever.  I feel terrible (not only because of the pain) but because I caused a lot of worry and issues (apparently, through word of mouth or I don't know, people came to think that I had fallen from the second floor of a building).  I feel completely embarrassed and occasionally miserable after this, I don't want to live in this house anymore because I leave and the neighbors are watching me, and all I see in these buildings now is the spot in the balcony where I jumped off.  And I am reaaaaally not in a good spot with my rotary club now and am dreading the chewing out I'm going to get from them, I've already heard from enough people 'you shouldn't have done that' as if I didn't already know that!  Them telling me that changes NOTHING, all it does is make me feel worse.  I cannot go back in time.  I cannot undo what I did.  I was not trying to hurt myself.  I was not trying to hurt anyone else.  I made a mistake.  I regret the decision I made that.  And no one can say they have never made a decision that they regret, no one can say they haven't done something they wish they hadn't have done.

Anyways, they gave me pain pills and already I am doing better, that day I couldn't walk without some assistance, yesterday I was walking as slowly as a 95 year old, today maybe I'm up to the speed of a 70 year old, and you should see the struggle it is to get up off the couch...but nothing is broken, my body is bruised and my ego is bruised but I'll be fine.  As for the pain, I just compare it to this:  You know when you are a complete lazy bum and you do no exercise whatsoever for a reaaally long time and then one day you do TONS of really tough exercises and you over do it?  And then the next day you are so sore that you can barely bend yourself, if you drop the remote control you have to ask someone to pick it up, getting out of bed is painful, sitting down on the toilet is difficult, all that jazz.  Yeah, that's kind of how it is, a strong version of that haha.  But each day is less painful and I am estimating that I'll be back to normal by around Sunday. 

The second part of bad news is that yesterday there was a VERY strong earthquake in a northern city in Chile called Iquique and the earthquake was felt in southern Peru as well.  The earthquake was 8 point something, I don't remember...that's really strong.  Now there are tsunami warnings.  I don't think it will affect us, but it's kind of scary to think about it.  I don't mean to worry you guys.  Everything will be okay.

Okay so that's all my terrible news. On a lighter note, yesterday Chachi visited me in the afternoon so that was nice and cheered me up a bit. 

I can't think of anything else.

Here's to a hopefully good rest of my week!
-Ginger

Macaroni and Cheese

A few days ago I had a rotary dinner at a chicken restaurant called Dallas.  Me and Emilie (and Chachi for a few moments) took a bunch of selfies.

That day, Chachi found out he is going to go to Michigan for his exchange!  We're both excited that he isn't placed too far away and so maybe we'll be able to see eachother.

And today I went over to my friend Andre's house and me, Andre, and Eduardo enjoyed an american lunch that I prepared.  We had Kraft Mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, grape soda, bugles (those cone shaped chips) and I made cookie dough from a mix before we found out the oven didn't work.  We actually spent like 30 minutes going through the kitchen trying to find something flat and metal we could use as a cookie sheet before we figured out the oven didn't work, oops (people don't make cookies here). So we ate a bit of the raw cookie dough afterwards haha. 

Andre and Eduardo

Look Mom, I cooked!

haha

Then after we ate we were all sleepy haha.

Also Eduardo got me a cool new t-shirt:

Caution: Llama Crossing

Also I tried this thing where you put photos on top of each other (in this case I just used two photos) and they aren't lined up completely right but I like how it looks:

Tomorrow I am changing to my third host family.  Supposedly.  I say supposedly because the plans have been jumbled and somehow not known by both parties (and by that I mean that the family I'm going to tomorrow did not know I would be coming tomorrow until I called them tonight).  I thought I'd be changing earlier in the month but then it never happened and a few days ago I found out I'd be changing tomorrow.  So I packed up my stuff yesterday.  I'm happy because I'll be moving back into the general area where I used to live (kind of) close to my old school and where my friends live.  And I'll be living closer to my university (35 minutes compared to 90 minutes). 

Oh yeah, speaking of university, I actually went to my first class a few days ago and was surprised (and confused) to find out that it was in English!  The class was Introduccion a las ciencias sociales = Introduction to Social Sciences.  And the teacher spoke and taught in english and the peruvian students in the class discussed and answered questions in english and everything on the board was english.  I did not understand why it was taught in english but I was pretty impressed by the students' ability to discuss topics in english and that everyone pretty much understood.  And it turns out another one of my classes (Marketing de Alimentos y Bebidas = Marketing of Foods and Drinks) is also taught in English!  I do not know why rotary has put us in classes that are in English...we had to take a spanish test to be placed in the university and now we are attending classes that are taught in English.  Where is the logic in that? Oh well. 

And speaking of that spanish test, I think I mentioned taking it but I don't think I ever talked about the results.  Out of all the students in Lima (30 ish I think) I am one of the 6 that was placed in the Advanced spanish level!  So I'm happy about that :)

Oh and another quick thing!  I rode on the train for the first time here a few days ago.  Here they have a train but it's not very extensive, it's just one route and doesn't go that far.  I'd only ever used the buses here before but then a few days ago Eduardo and I took the train to go to a market.  I think it was kind of like a subway train but it was above ground, it was on an elevated concrete track thing that actually goes above the streets, kind of hard to explain.  Anyways, it was really nice because it's air conditioned and it arrives WAY quicker than going by car or bus because there is no traffic whatsoever.  And it's only slightly more expensive than taking the bus (for the train it's 1.50 soles no matter how far you go, which is still dirt cheap when looked at in american dollars = 53 cents USD).  I enjoyed taking the train, it seemed like a miracle to have arrived in such quick time.  I've gotten used to spending 2-3 hours a day on the bus.

Let me see....anything else I can talk about...hmm a few days ago I went to the movie theater with Eduardo, and we saw this weird creepy terror movie that was preeeeetty scary.

That's the cover...so as you can imagine, it was horrifying hahaha.  It was about this lady who got pregnant on her honeymoon and on the last night of her honeymoon the natives did this ceremony thing to her and I think her baby was demented or turned into the devil or something and the lady got demented too..anyways, the movie ended with her killing her sister and cutting open her own stomach to let out the baby and it was creeeeepy.

So far here in Peru, I have seen the following movies in theater:

• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (I think)(it was the very beginning of the year and it was in spanish with no subtitles so I didn't understand very much)
• Instructions not Included (in spanish the title is No Se Aceptan Devoluciones) which was a super cute movie which I suggest seeing.

• Carrie (a horror movie which wasn't very scary)(later found out that it's been remade throughout the years like 3 times)
• We're the Millers (pretty funny)
• Devil's Due (weird)
• Paranormal Activity 5 (it was really good! the best of the paranormal activity movies)

I think that's all of them...I think I'll go to the movies tomorrow too!

Okay that's everything I can think of haha :)
Bye!
-Ginger

Party

It's been a while since I've posted. It's weird, I'm really busy and go out pretty much every day, but then I sit down to write a blog post and can't remember a darn thing I did before today.  It's hard enough remembering yesterday!  I do remember that a few days ago, I went out to dinner with a bunch of exchange students, a few peruvians, and Connor's family (real family) who had come to visit him from Florida.  We had pollo a la brasa.  

And a few days ago I got invited to a party (well, my friends got invited and were told I could come hahaha) and I wanted to go but it was a bit far from where I live so I wasn't sure how I would get home afterwards.  So I ended up staying the night at Chachi's house! hahaha.  So yesterday late afternoon I got all my stuff together and took my normal bus route and then walked to Chachi's house.  A little later we headed off to the party with another girl that we went to school with.  We ended up getting there around 10 I think.  At first I was a bit bored but later in the night, a bunch of our friends from school came and even another exchange student came and it was a lot more fun after that.  So me and my friends from school (Me, Chachi, Andre, Vannia, Eduardo, Ian, Yllen, maybe some others I'm forgetting) were sitting around in a chair circle just laughing and having a good time, it was nice.  I didn't know anyone else at the party really, because it was thrown by a friend of a friend haha.  Teenagers here seem to be more social smokers than anything.  I don't know any teen here (none that I've met at least) that smokes regularly, but a lot of my friends do smoke at parties.  A few choose not to smoke at all, however.  I have not indulged in any smoking or drinking, just throwing that out there lol.  At 2 the party started to end and they started cleaning up, we were hanging outside until about 2:30 and left around then.  I stayed the night at Chachi's house (this was confirmed beforehand up by my host mother and Chachi's mom just so that's clear lol)(and in different rooms (different floors of the house actually)) and so we ended up going to bed around 3.  Then if you can believe it, we got up at 7 (they were a comfortable 4 hours of sleep) to get ready to go to a rotary event at my old school, Colegio Santa Rosa de Lima.  The event was to inform all of the peruvian students here in Lima that will be going on exchange at the end of this summer about exchange and about the countries they'd be going to.  So each country group had a table set up with decorations, flags, some food, music, and info about their countries.  I haven't gotten the photos off my camera yet so I'll talk more about that and add the pictures in my next post.

Byeeeee
-Ginga