Relax!

Fun Fact No. 49: Marching bands? Every Sunday in the main square, there are goofy, sloppy marching bands to accompany the police and military officers that parade around the square a few times. It's fun and funny and reminds me of a 4th of July parade in a tiny town in BFE USA.

Friday night Monica came over and she, Cesar, Jorge, Sandrine, and I sat around and drank wine and shot the bull. The second floor of my house has an open area to wash and dry laundry, and it looks over a good part of the city. We dragged a few mattresses up there and sat out under the stars to watch a movie, Blood Diamonds, a kind of cheesy but good flick about conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone. After the movie was through, we sat around and chatted and laughed about the different onomatopoeias from our different countries (Spain, Peru, France, USA). A duck in all four countries makes about the same sound, but the horse or pig sounds are completely different. It was a good laugh!

Yesterday during the day was a whole lot of nothing. I did internet in the morning, ran some errands in the afternoon, and worked on some interview questions in the evening. Then I went out with Monica, Cesar, Jorge, and Sandrine to grab a beer on the Boulevard, a kind of main drag with clowns, artisans, comedians, and other fun Saturday-night-type-stuff right on the River. I ran to grab a hamburger and who should I run into but Alfredo Guzman, a friend from UT who I haven't seen in at least 2 years. Alfredo got his master's in LLILAS at UT and played cajon in the Andean Ensemble, and is an all around great guy. He and his wife are back in Peru with their adorable 1.5 year old daughter and his new job as a consultant for the Peruvian court systems requires him to travel quite a bit. It was a very happy, exciting reunion and we sat around and shot the bull for some time. It was neat to have a friend from Austin here and he really likes Iquitos, so it was also great to see Iquitos through new eyes and drop the bitterness a bit. Hooray!