Control de lectura

Again, I apologize for my tardiness with this post, but I hope you enjoyed watching the videos that I posted yesterday.  Also, I'm going to thank Mark again for the videos because he deserves it. :)  Thanks Mark!!!  Anyway now let's talk about yesterday...

I woke up early (not really early, but early enough) and headed to meet Tonisha in Parque Kennedy.  When I got there the aerobics class hadn't started yet, but they were warming up.  I'm sure I'll end up doing that by the end of the semester, but yesterday was not that day.  Tonisha and I ahd the plan to go biking while doing our homewokr for Living and Learning.  We rented these nice yellow bikes for 6 soles ($2.18) for one hour and rode down Arequipa (the road that is closed on Sundays).  Unfortunately, we didn't make it down the whole road, but we made it farther than what we walked last Sunday.  The whole strip is 6 km (3.73 miles) and we did about 4.4 km so in total we biked 8.8 km (5.46 miles).  I don't do too well on bikes in case you didn't know.  The only time when I'm good on a bike is when noone is around me and when I have a lot of road to ride down.  I have this small fear about biking, like I think it's crazy when people bike without holding the handlebars.  Anyway, biking was a small challenge for me yesterday, especially when there are other bikers, runners, dogs, etc. and the fact that we rode on a bike path where other bikers were passing me.  It freaks me out a little.  Besides scaring Tonisha by almost getting hit by a car and besides an almost crash when Tonisha and I swerved towards each other the ride went well.  We were able to do part of our Living and Learning homework while we biked, too.  Our homework consists of taking pictures around the neighborhood of both curious and obvious things.  We were instructed to take five pictures of things we understood immediately and five pictures of things that puzzled us or made us wonder.  We were then supposed to ask people on the street about the picture in order to spark conversation I acutally attempted this, but it was a fail.  I asked an elderly man about a sign, but unfortunately I couldn't understand his answers. :(  However, I plan on asking my host mom and my cultural partner about the pictures.  On Wednesday we get to show and talk about our pictures in class so that should be interesting.  Here are a few of mine...

Pearl Jam posters

This is actually Tonisha's picture, but I took it for her.
It's the seat belt of the micro driver.  A lot of micro drivers do this! 

Okay, the next one makes me laugh.  As you can see there are two Peruvians walking across the street when the light is red for pedestrians.  This is a VERY common thing here.  I do it now, too.  It really is safe as long as you still look both ways.  It's the most hilarious thing though to watch the tourists.  I can point out right away who the tourists are at a crosswalk.  The tourists literally stand there for the whole red light until it turns green.  It's comical.





This is a group of Miraflores district workers cleaning the sidewalks.
They do this a lot.  They just take buckets of water and then scrub.
It's quite odd because sidewalks are supposed to be dirty.

After our hour bike ride, I went to Tonisha's house where I was attacked by her dog as always.  Well actually before we went there, we went to Plaza Vea first in order to get some food because we were hungry after biking.  I got trail mix and bought M&Ms to add to it.  It made the perfect snack for the thing we did next...We watched the movie La Misión (The Mission) with Robert DeNiro.  We had to watch it for our Ethnography class.  It was a little slow and Tonisha and I pretty much had to bold our eyes open to watch the whole thing because we were exhausted, but it was an okay movie.  It was about the missions that were formed in the Amazon during the 17th century.  After the movie was done, I headed home just in time to turn around and leave for lunch with my host mom.  We went to a place called Crepes & Waffles and it was delicious!  I had a really good pita with ice cream for dessert.  I can't wait to go there again sometime.

When we got home I "dedicated" my afternoon and evening to writing a paper, which they call control de lecturas here, that was due today in Ethnography.  It's basically a paper that is based on assigned readings.  This paper focused on the characteristics of the missions of the Jesuits and Franciscans in the Amazon and it also compared this information with the information in the movie.  Writing it took longer than it should ahve, but I couldn't focus, but as long as I finished it (which I did) then it doesn't matter.

Also, my mom went to a birthday party for one of her relatives and brought back chicken salad sandwiches and a nice piece of chocolate cake.  Boy, am I glad she was thinking of me at the party because it was all delicious and it was another good break from my paper. :)

So minus the paper and my almost bike wrecks, my day was wonderful.  I hope yours was, too!