Spring break

Well, this week is spring break here, and it hasn't been very exciting. Instead of my usual three or four hours spent at home alone, it's turned into most of the day. Yay! But, I have been able to go out a couple times. I went shopping with the other Zoe here, and bough a bunch of clothes. We also went to eat at the restaurant that John threw up at, the food was good, and the view of the plaza was very pretty. Earlier that day I went to the post office to pick up a package from my mom, I was there for about 5 hours. That was loads of fun.
Other than those couple great adventures, I spent most of my time in my room trying to entertain myself because I can't go out alone. So I painted my nails, and did some yoga.
My sister, right after skyping with Vanessa, which she shouldn't have been doing, and right before leaving for a class came in and told me that I've been here for two months, and that I'm not trying to be a part of the family. Now, I will tell you, it's very hard to interact with a family who is rarely home. It's also very hard going from being an only child living with just your mom to having siblings and a family that lives right below you. It's a big change, but I'm starting to get used to it.
I also went to Bolivia to renew my visa. And boy, was that a trip. My host mom told me the day that we were going to leave that we were leaving at 10 that night. So, I packed up my things, and we were off soon after that. We got on a bus and headed to Puno, we arrived there at around 4 the next morning. Then we got on another bus that took us tot he Bolivia-Peru border, we got there a couple hours later. After waiting what seemed like hours, we went to go get my visa renewed, but turns out I threw out the paper I needed to get back into the country. Oops. But, a man that was working there helped us out and managed to get me a new one. So we had to walk around Bolivia for an hour or two.
Being super duper tired all day, I hardly ate anything and wanted just to go home. After we got my visa renewed, we went on a bus back to Puno, at this point I had no idea what time it was. We got to the little house that I'm guessing is my host family's, and all I wanted to do is sleep. My host mom made me eat some food, and I found a scale there. It said I was about 53 kilograms, which is about 116 pounds, so I haven't really gained anything here so far.
After that, I turned on the TV and watched some show on Animal Planet about pandas, and fell asleep for a few hours. We left Puno at around 6 that night to head back home. When we got home it was 2 in the morning on Saturday, but i thought it was Sunday. So I was really bummed that I had only one day to rest before school, until I woke up at about 9 that morning to realize that it was in fact Saturday.
Saturday I hardly did anything, and I sure needed the rest. Now it's Sunday night, and everyone is doing their own thing while I'm just here on the computer. I have school tomorrow, which I'm a little excited about because my spring break wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be.

Lima kids

The last couple days have been very interesting. After we got back from the trip everyone felt sick, myself included. We were told it was from the food. Everyone had something going on.

We went to Tyson's house to exchange pictures from the trip and ate some really gross pizza that made John sick. It could have been because he ate mine.

A couple days later John, Kristen, Zoe and I went to Plaza de Armas. When John and I got there the first thing he did was throw up. On the stairs of a restaurant. The lady by the door said it was going to be five soles to clean the stairs.

Then we walked around the plaza for a while and didn't do much else.

The next day, the exchange kids from Lima showed up, so we went to meet them. It was such a fun night. We met them at the plaza, exchanged stores about walking around and feeling safe, and got serenaded by a mariachi band. Super cool. John and I went back to their hotel with them and them his dad picked us up and took me home.

The same sort of thing happened the next night. At about 4 John and I went to the plaza. I needed to but gifts for people, so we went to do that and then walked to the Lima kids hotel.

That night was a mix of walking around and shopping mostly. After a couple hours we went with them to eat. We talked and tried talking in different accents. At the end of dinner we talked about doing a flash mob at the plaza, and thy didn't work out very well. It just turned into us walking there and standing around.

We saw a couple people sitting on a bench playing music and some of us went over. A few of the m started dancing while the rest of us just laughed. Afterwards, they wanted to take pictures with us.

We joined back up with the rest of the group, who were just taking and standing around. Getting to meet them was so fun. I can't wait to visit them in December!

-abrazos y besos de Peru.

Location:Plaza de Armas