Hace dos meses

Whoa!  I have been here for two months now!!  I don't know about you, but I think that's crazy!  Time is flying by.  Pretty soon I will be on a plane home and freezing in the Illinois winter!!!  My time here so far has been amazing and I'm expecting the next two months to be amazing as well!  I hope you all continue to stick with me in reading my blogs because I'm excited to share them.

Well, moving on to my day, I started out in Peruvian Social Reality.  Today, we started to discuss Indigenismo and Hispanismo.  We didn't really get too far into talking about them, but Indigenismo is a movement supporting indigenous people and Hispanismo is kind of the opposite supporting the Spanish culture.  Then I had my Living and Learning, where some of got to share one curious photo and one obvious photo.  Some the curious photos that other people had were..a picture of dump trucks dumping something into the ocean.  Well, come to find out, they were dumping rubble from construction and sand.  And actually, another thing I learned is that the road that is next to ocean used to be the ocean, but it's been all built up to in that same way.  Another curious picture was a picture of a circle on the ground with an 'S' in it.  These are Zonas de Seguridades (Security Zones) for earthquakes.  After an earthquake occurs those are the meeting spots for people.  The last curious one that was shown today was a symbol in graffiti.  We talked a little bit about gangs and thieves and it was actually really interesting.  Before thieves go and rob a house there are people that mark the houses with graffiti to mean different things.  It's actually kind of creepy and scary, but still an interesting system.  Here are some of the symbol's meanings:  There's nothing here, on vacaction, single woman, careful police, it's already been robbed, use crowbar, really good etc.  Haha, scary, right?!  But still it's cool.  If I lived here I would just mark my house with a "there's nothing here" symbol or something. :)  Anyway, we didn't get through everyone's pictures because we had to move on and talk about the difference between stereotypes and generalizations, but I can't wait to see the other curious pictures that people have next week.

After my delicious lunch, I had a midterm in my Spanish Writing Workshop.  I actually had forgotten that it was today, but it wasn't a huge deal that I forgot because it was only writing two short essays.  It's not like I could really study for it.  It went well thought, I think.  Well see I guess.  Then, I had ethnography where we discussed a ton of different anthropologists that have studied the Amazon.  It's funny because I make a game out of note taking.  If I can get all the information written down before the professor switches the slide then I win and if I don't then I lose.  Let's just say I lose quite a bit.  The professor moves pretty quickly, but I try to write down as much as I can.  It's comical though because sometimes he only stays on one slide long enough to write down two words of it.  Tonisha even started taking notes on her computer and still sometimes she loses the game.  Again, like I said..it's comical. :)

Tonight, I have no homework because tomorrow all I have is ballet so I came home, ate dinner, and watched last night's episode of Glee.  That's so American of me. :)  I then went to Cafe Z with Tonisha and Mark.  I actually wrote some of this blog while I was there, but now I'm home again.  Anyway, we went there and all just worked out different things.  Also, I got pineapple juice and some waffles, they were great.  Cafe Z always has American music playing and we started with listening to it, but then Tonisha asked me to play a song in Spanish, so I did.  I then became the DJ for songs in Spanish on my computer.  It's funny, there we were, Americans sitting in a cafe where there is American music playing and we were playing Latin music from my computer.  I wonder what all the Peruvians were thinking about us. :)  I do like a lot of the songs here.  I was trying to pick my favorite song and I don't know if I could, but I have a few that are pretty high on the list. :)

Now, I am in the process of watching the first Criminal Minds episode from this season. :)  I probably won't make it through the whole thing because I am tired, but I hope all of you are having wonderful nights.  Buenas noches!!