Peruvian Kryptonite

I have found my Peruvian kryptonite. The thing I really can’t stand. There is a Public Address system in the barrio I live in, and almost every morning around 7:00am a man gets on the PA system and gives announcements. Yesterday, during “El Dia de Padre”, he talked for over two hours starting at 7:30am. I can’t stand it. Luckily for me, this is not culture shock this is life. The people who live here can’t stand it either. I’ve had numerous conversations with people here who understand my frustration with the early announcements. Another Peace Corps volunteer, Frank, says that man is his nemesis. I couldn’t agree more. Here are some pictures so you can see that you can’t avoid these megaphones. They are everywhere, even in the local church.

It’s interesting that I’ve been here for a week and it was on this very celebrated holiday that I had my worst Spanish day yet. I woke up unable to construct a sentence in Spanish. I try not to get down because I haven’t been here long enough to be bad, and Loly says that I have improved a lot since my first Sunday here. She believes that I will get better and better. That’s what everyone tells me. Speaking of Loly she has become one of my closest friends here. We talk about everything, and we laugh about all kinds of things like when my four-year-old sister throws a tantrum (which happens hourly, if not more). I find that I want to spend all of my time with her. And that’s saying a lot because I’m meeting cool people, and my fellow volunteers are awesome.

So as I mentioned earlier, yesterday was “Dia Del Padre” as it was in the States and people went all out. We had dinner with my “abuela”. She lives up the street and houses another Peace Corps volunteer. We had arroz con pollo and “papa a la huancaina” (Huancayo is a city five hours from where I live right now) the dish is like a potato with alfredo sauce on it. We had a couple of beers also. One was Crystal the beer of Peru, it tastes like bud light. The other was Cuzqueña it’s a dark beer that tastes just sweeter than Guinness. I really like it. It’s common to combine it with Inka cola (the soda/pop of Peru) then it tastes like a root beer. Inka Cola tastes like cream soda just sweeter. I ate with my two sisters, Loly, my abuela (Jesusa), Danielle (the other PC volunteer), and my “tio” Jorge. He was the only man with whom we celebrated Father’s Day. After the late lunch we watched a quick pick-up game of soccer and then returned home. I did call my dad if anyone was worried.

At the market

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