Lima bound!

Fun Fact No. 16: Catholics are all the same. Well, I wouldn't want to go and make any super-essentialist statements like that, but really, there is very little difference between a Peruvian and an American Catholic. Neither of us goes to church, except maybe for Christmas or a funeral, and both of us believe in God and have no problem with alcohol and dancing. Of course there's the occasional devout Catholic, but in either case, he or she is usually older and dates back before Vatican II.

Well, this weekend my friend Kirle was rearended by a motocarro and flew off her motorcycle. She just has some bruises (thank God!) but regardless, on Friday night we stayed in and watched some movies (Kinky Boots and then Casanova. The Casanova was a copy and it the spoken language was Russian. Kind of funny, niet?

Saturday I finally started "fieldwork." Well, I went to visit Carlos Reategui, one of the percussionists in the band, Los Solteritos, that I'll (hopefully) be working with. He was surprised to see me. I think when I tell people that I'll be back, like I did last summer, no one really believed me. But here I am, true to my word, and it was good to see him. Carlos owns a local chain of creamy popsicles that come in every local fruit flavor including aguaje (an orange palm fruit), cocona (a super tart yummyness), guava (not like guava in the states - it has a vanilla yogurt flavor and comes dressed in a really long seed pod), and pineapple (whose season begins soon...). His store is called Shambo, and at any soccer game or event or even just on the main drag, people are selling Shambo chupetes. They're really delicious. Anyway, we hung out for a bit and he showed me pictures of his baby who is now a year old. I think it'll be good to work with him and the band so I'm excited about it.

Saturday afternoon I went shopping with Kari, another friend of Mario's who I have officially stolen. She's fun and easy to get along with, and she's ever so fashion conscious, so she dragged me about to find a more suitable pair of "going out" jeans. She convinced me to buy a pair of low-riders (that I actually just exchanged for another pair because as Michael O'Brien and I learned our first day at Texas, "butt crack is the new cleavage" and frankly, that grosses me out) and a pair of nice, semi-normal (since everything here is skin-tight) dark jeans. I felt a little ridiculous because I'm not a big shopper and how the heck do I know what to look for? But we had fun. Then we met up with Zeudy (my new favorite person here) and bopped along the boulevard and went shopping for food for dinner that night. I cooked at Mario Luis' house and it was really refreshing because I like having friends over for dinner, and I sure as heck can't cook over firewood or charcoal like they do at home, so it was really fun. I made spicy guacamole (yum!) and a potato thingy with olives and artichoke hearts and other random stuff. It was Mario Luis, Cesar, Zeudy, Kari, Charatin, Raul, and Lilia, and it was so nice to just sit, eat, drink Martini (with pineapple juice) and shoot the bull. Then the girls + Cesar and I went to Berimbau to go dancing. At this point in the evening, I was exhausted, so at about 2am I had to hit the road. I think the rest of them were there until 4 or 5. I just can't do that crap anymore!

Yesterday I spent the whole day at Gabel Sotil's house. Gabel is a professor at the public university here, and he used to be the Regional Director of Education. He's perhaps the best educator I've ever met, and he regularly gets invited by UNICEF to write books about the state of the children in the Amazon, and their education, etc. He has three charming boys who are very sweet and easy to get along with. Hugo, the middle son, is all about an iPod that he wants me to bring back from the states (they cost 3x as much here). The oldest son, Gabel, is a super wiz with computers and helped me fix a bug on my laptop. The youngest, Marcos, is about 13 and has some serious attitude but is really funny. They have a good friend, Jean-Pierre who is half Peruvian, half French. He's one of the first signs of alternative life I have seen in Iquitos. He studies art at a small, private art school here and has a little pile of dreadlocks on the top of his head. His accent is interesting, because sometimes he sounds really Peruvian and sometimes he sounds really French. Regardless, we all had a great time eating and watching soccer. I got there at about 11am and left at 8pm. It was a really nice day.

Last night I was really homesick. All of the sudden 9 months seemed REALLY long.