Jackpot

Fun Fact No. 36: Chicken isn't meat. I know that many of you familiar with Latin American culture know this, but for those of you who don't I'm for real. Chicken is white meat therefore it's not meat. I recently gave up meat for a while because it's been making me feel not so great, and everyone is like "well, what about chicken?" and when I say NO meat at all, they respond: But it's CHICKEN.

You would NEVER believe what luck I had yesterday. After a long few weeks of crap and more crap, yesterday I'm bebopping down the main drag to work at the gradeschool when I see a huge pile of trash and all these people are picking through it. I look closer and I see some music. What the heck? Sure enough, there are BOATLOADS of scores from the 20s, 30s, and 40s just lying around in the middle of the street. Tangos, valses, rumbas, milongas, huaynos, marchas, sambas, guarachas, fox-trots, the works! I start picking it up as fast as I can and when everyone sees the gringa madly scrambling to collect all the music, they all pitch in. All of the sudden everyone started yelling "faster! Faster!" The rush, you ask? The garbage truck was coming. We scrambled and scrambled and I was able to salvage a HUGE stack of music, most of which is in great condition. Even the garbage man helped me a bit. Most of the people were curious and asked what my interest was in "culture." I responded that I'm a musician and that this music is Peruvian history. They made me pull out my flute and play some of the music. I've never felt like a hippie until that moment. All that was missing was an open guitar case. But it was fun and COMPLETELY out of the ordinary. Gee willikers!

Yesterday was also Dina's birthday. (Oh, Happy Birthday Michael & Elise! You old farts!) The party was tremendous and true to form, lasted from 1pm until 10pm. Lots of food, dancing, and beer and the funniest part was that carnaval basically started. Apparently here in Iquitos, Carnaval involves lots of water baloons, flour, and talcum powder that people throw at each other. Needless to say, we were covered in all of the above. It was great fun. I felt like I was 10!