...and on the Third Day, there was green stew...

Hola! Or, as my friends the horses say.... HAAAYYYYYY!

Today started with the Return of The Shower. Surprisingly, nobody got electrocuted AND I finally figured out the hot water!.... sort of! Woot!

We had spanish at Maximo which is always a time and a half since 75% of us (by that I mean 3) are from canada so we´re all one big happy family. The first twenty minutes of class Daniel and I regailed the class with our escapades on being lost in the dark last night. Turns out where we were ´lost´ is like... 10 minutes or less from everything we know so we kind of felt like idiots.... or, at least I did! But now we know so hopefully no more getting lost! We weren´t taking our chances today though, so we left the orphanage a bit earlier so that we could get back to Maximo Nivel before dark. Other than the taxi that brought us there dropping us off in sort of the wrong spot and having to live on Daniels inherently amazing sense of direction to get to the orphanage....then being locked out of the orphanage for 15 minutes (which was well spent buzzing their buzzer which is AMAZINGLY annoying sounding to everyone indoors ... lol) ..... things worked out okay!

We went home for lunch between spanish and the orphanage, where we were greeted with green soup! ..... MmMmMmmMmMmmmmM!!!!!!............................

It was made of spinach. I think.

Anyway then Daniel and I both thought we were going to be sick (not sure if it was the soup or the random kiwis that I peeled us with my trusty, rusty pocket knife .... way less bush-league than it sounds cuz I totally sanitized it)...

I make it sound to be such terrible times but truly we´re both having an awesome trip! When we got into the orphanage the boys mobbed Daniel with hugs and stuff so that was kind of sweet. The boys tried to teach us some spanish but none of it was in our translater book (which i gave them to use to learn english while they taught us spanish) but we still all had a fun time! Turns out the kids here know how to play the card game ¨war¨that Stephanie (sister) and I played ALL THE TIME as kids at Nan´s... only here they call it Guerra (spanish for War... go figure). AND they know how to play blackjack! So it was sick ole times.. ALSO one of the boys taught us how to use a sling to shoot rocks at a tree which was pretty deadly I must say. I felt pretty cool hahaha.

We took some pictures with the boys.... but I got distracted part of the way through our volunteer when I saw these adults come in with a guy in a suit. one of my favorite kids from yesterday´s coloring spree was over with the adults so I asked the other boys who they were. They told me it was his parents and this is the only way they can see him since he was removed from his house for abuse of some form or another. So that was kind of sad because the mom was kind of crying and showing her son what he looked like in her mirror.... i dunno.... the other kids seemed a little down about it too. I wonder if their parents ever come see them.

Anyway! One other....awkward/odd thing about volunteer today was the ¨machismo¨we´ve heard about finally reared its ugly head at me when Daniel was playing ball with the boys. One of the older kids (maybe 15-17yrs old) sort of.... as mom would say ¨pulled a Neil¨on me.... in a suggestive manner (ie; I saw a bit/lot more than I wanted to...) after declaring something derogatory about my chest... so I sort of bee lined to Daniel and avoided the kid for the rest of our day. Daniel´s going to have a machismo talk to him tomorrow about how were ¨,married¨and I´m his ¨woman¨and therefore he´s the alpha male or whatever boys do in times like these... so I dont think it´ll be a problem any more.

After volunteer we went to Normans again... but Francisco wasn´t working so after some peruvian wine and fries we cheesed it outta there.... and thennnnn...

We finally went into Fallen Angel! .... and then we left! hahaha

We weren´t in the mood for alpaca, mystery fish, or guinea pig and apparently that was all that was cookin´so we kind of just wandered around until we magically found Jack´s (a restaurant all the travel books rave about). IT WAS SUPER AWESOME THEY HAD DIET COKE OMG (diet sodas of any kind are basically nonexistant here so we´ve been drinking nothing but cocoa tea and water) AND they made us NACHOES without cheese AND with vegetarian beans! AND with homemade salsa! the salsa was pretty much the best thing ever.

That pretty much sums up our day EXCEPT!!!!! Daniel found my camera charger!!! So we´re going to just get all photogenic for the rest of the trip i think!

Also, I finally fixed the comment section (i think) so feel free to write whatever or email us any time! We dont get the internet a whole bunch, but I´ll do my best to check what I can and so will Daniel! He says he misses everyone back home and as soon as he´s not too sleepy he´ll start filling my place in the journal-writing world :)

Until then..... Buenos Noches!!! (good night!)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxx
-A.