Como con mis Dedos y Ahora Estoy Una Poca Enferma

I am extremely tired and a little bit sick and really can't deal with speaking much Spanish right now, so I am taking the rare trip to sit by myself.  I am in my sister's room, as the wi-fi doesn't reach into mine and I am going to bed soon.  Very early.  But I figured I had might as well blog and try to upload more pics while I am not doing anything else.  Two days in a row.  You should be very pleased with me, Ma.

The baby shower.  Holy hell.  It was the greatest thing I have done so far in Peru.  I don't even really know how to get into it.  We got there and just sat for awhile, waiting for more guests to arrive.  We were pretty much first. Me and four gringos and Ashley's parents.  People all piled in pretty fast and trays of cups of cocktail and little snacks started going around.  Pretty soon, a clown materialized.  He performed for probably an hour or more?  I really have no idea.  But the gringos might have been his favorite props.  He took up Biz and Zack right away and made them play a game that I never did figure out.  Not sure how well Biz got it either.  It was fantastic to watch.  Later he made Ashley and Ellen race to put adult diapers on two Peruvian men.  He made mountains of dirty jokes and obscene gestures and was just all around fantastic.  I am hiring him for something someday.  He had all sorts of great games - girls dropping raw eggs down the neck of the guy's shirt and having to work it all the way down and out the pant leg without breaking it, the baby daddy having to guess all the presents and force feeding him liquor when he was wrong, and many others that I could not even begin to figure out due to my lack of advanced Spanish skills.  There was a ton of dancing and drinking after this.  When we left at 3am, we were pretty much the first to go.  The folks here go til morning.  Every time.

Slept in yesterday at Ashley's house.  When I woke up it was pretty much already time to get ready for the Fourth of July party at Kelci's parents' house.  I was already exhausted and not particularly pumped to go.  I had gone out for a couple in Yanacoto on Friday and had wanted to stay in on Saturday, but you just can't turn down an invitation to a Peruvian fiesta and I am glad I didn't.  But that this point, the last thing I wanted was another party.  Again, really glad I went.

There was an insane amount of awesome American food that everyone made.  Mac and cheese, pizza, pasta salad, chips and dips, hot dogs, brownies, pudding, cakes (oh god tres leche you are awesome), and a bunch of other random stuff.  Very quickly, everyone was drinking beer and playing cards sitting in the bottom of an empty swimming pool.  I found this to be very predictable but very hilarious.  My favorite part was when it eventually turned into an amazing dance party.  We were standing in this huge circle, with a beer bottle in the middle, taking turns dancing over it.  We were great dancers.  We were listening to the World Cup theme songs on repeat for this and today everyone has it stuck in their head.  It's rough.  Worth it though.  I feel like I did some much needed bonding with many other trainees.  Good stuff.

Only 6 weeks left until training ends and I am shipped out into the jungle somewhere by myself for two years. Whew.  Tomorrow we head into the mothership office in Lima to have our last interview with our program director to help him decide our assignments.  At the end of this week, we have language interviews to reassign the groups according to how much we have improved.  I started in Beginners Mid and we need to get to Intermediate Mid by the time we leave here.  I hope to have made it to Intermediate Low by now.  I know that I have improved quite a bit.  A lot of my learning is remembering the things I knew so many years ago, so it is going relatively quickly for me (I think).

I am tired now.  And my computer just informed me that it finished getting me some comic books, so I think I am off to bed to read and pass out very quickly.  It appears I am not uploading photos.  Some other time.  I need to steal photos from the 4th party from my friends as I of course killed my batteries after taking the first pic.  I should really stock up on those things...