Super excited! What an opportunity!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Exciting News!
During the summer break here (Dec 18th-Mar 1st) I am off on paid holidays. This year I am going to be a chaperone on a school trip from Jan 21st until Feb 14th to HONG KONG! There are 8 students going on an exchange to The Chinese International School in Hong Kong for three weeks and they, plus the school, will be paying for my flights, accomodation, food and travel expenses. During the days while the students are at school I pretty much get to go around HK on my own and check everything out as I am really only their chaperone on weekends. Which is fine by me when I haven't paid a thing to be there!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Border Trekking and Trick or Treating
All are not even closely related to each other. I realize I have avoided this post because I am incredibly tired of regaling my interesting yet horribly misguided view of life moving to another country. I have been hit by bout after bout of bad luck and much of it I have been trying to avoid. However, this post is not all bad.
My tourist visa was expired by 10 days and I needed to renew it to finalize my paperwork to become a legal citizen here. My solution? Take a trip! A long weekend was coming up, so Pedro and I decided we would drive to Chile. Four days, 18 hours each way. Day 1 was to be spent driving and partying in Arequipa, Peru, the second largest city in Peru and built entirely in the style of Spanish colonial architecture. Day 2 was to be spent driving to Arica, Chile, a little beach town directly across the border of Peru. Day 3 was going to involve driving back to Arequipa and getting heavily intoxicated before driving back home on Day 4. Things didn't turn out that way though.
In Arequipa we were mugged at knife-point and had all our money stolen even though we were in one of the safest areas of the city. At the border we were told we couldn't cross the Peruvian side after they stamped my passport and wouldn't cancel it (luckily we made it across, otherwise I was a woman without a country). After sleeping in Arica, we awoke to find the passenger side of the window smashed in with only the radio stolen, which we predict was because it was the only car in the parking lot with a Peruvian license plate (Peru + Chile = war). Since we hated Arequipa, we drove farther to Camana while I was face-smashed with sand and fog through my open window for 18 hours. Needless to say, it was a serious test to our relationship.
I'm gonna have to say we passed it though. Despite all of the problems, the trip somehow turned out to be fun. We saw some amazing festivals and ate delicious food (and drink) in Chile while walking around a nice boardwalk. I tried Alpaca for the first time and it was actually pretty good. We saw the bottom of some nice glasses in Camana drinking our tasty wine and pisco. And we saw some amazing landscapes and talked the whole trip. By then end we could help but laugh at everything that had happened and were in incredibly good spirits. I would do it again - minus the whole mugging, interrogation, stealing thing.
The funniest part of the trip was watching me getting covered in sand when we had to drive through parts of the desert littered with mini sandstorms. AND we also saw a huge tornado, sand tunnel thing literally 20 feet from our car. I kept imagining us getting sucked up into it but Pedro assured me I was just paranoid. I wish I got some good pictures of it.
Two weeks ago it was Halloween. Pedro and I didn't really plan on doing anything serious; both of us were swamped at work and broke after our money was taken so we had planned on watching scary movies on the couch. This plan was changed drastically when his brother who is my age, Enrique, convinced us to go to this huge beach party in a place called Asia. Asia is this community an hour's drive from Lima covered in white, sandy beaches. All of the "celebrities" and richer families of Peru started buying property and housing there until it became this ultra-exclusive club. You have to be approved by the committee before you can purchase property there, and your house can only have so many levels depending on where it is situated on the beach. I felt uber-posh. Everyone who is everyone has a house up here or knows someone who has a house up here.
We went. It was ridiculous. I have not been that drunk in an extremely long time. The club was half-outdoors on the beach front and included all-you-can-drink of hard liquer. We spent the first part of the night bouncing from beach house to beach house and meeting up with this friend or that friend and having shots here or a drink there. The second was at the club. By the time we made it over to Enrique's friend's beach house to grab food and say goodnight to him before heading back to our place the sun was rising. We stayed up that night until about 7am, still drinking. I woke up three hours later and demanded I sleep the rest of my hangover off on the beach. Beautiful, sandy-white private beaches are lined with huge bungalow beach homes, the Hamptons in Peru. I loved every minute of that beach, despite being excessively hungover and getting a horrible sunburn. I was under the impression that "it was still winter, Pedro, it is not going to be sunny." We drove back tired, half-drunk but incredibly happy.
Lucky for me, Asia is where we are spending Christmas this year. And every subsequent weekend after that. Jealous?
Last weekend I had a lovely girls' day with my girlfriend Megan, who I absolutely adore. She is from L.A. but has been living in Peru for the past year and a bit and is exactly like me. We got manicures and pedicures, went home to change, and then went out to a club around the corner from us with our boyfriends where we became absolute embarrassments to the human race. The bottles were S./160.00 (60$ US) so we split one between the four of us while our other friends split some other ones with us as well. We returned home at 5am and spent the subsequent day in death throws. Serves us right, but completely worth it!
My camera card broke, so I can remove it from my camera. I am waiting to go to a market here where I can get a new one (let's compare it to, say, Pacific Mall). Once I've got it, you'll put images to the stories. But so far things have only been getting better and better each week. Summer is just around the corner for us here and I am super excited!
My tourist visa was expired by 10 days and I needed to renew it to finalize my paperwork to become a legal citizen here. My solution? Take a trip! A long weekend was coming up, so Pedro and I decided we would drive to Chile. Four days, 18 hours each way. Day 1 was to be spent driving and partying in Arequipa, Peru, the second largest city in Peru and built entirely in the style of Spanish colonial architecture. Day 2 was to be spent driving to Arica, Chile, a little beach town directly across the border of Peru. Day 3 was going to involve driving back to Arequipa and getting heavily intoxicated before driving back home on Day 4. Things didn't turn out that way though.
In Arequipa we were mugged at knife-point and had all our money stolen even though we were in one of the safest areas of the city. At the border we were told we couldn't cross the Peruvian side after they stamped my passport and wouldn't cancel it (luckily we made it across, otherwise I was a woman without a country). After sleeping in Arica, we awoke to find the passenger side of the window smashed in with only the radio stolen, which we predict was because it was the only car in the parking lot with a Peruvian license plate (Peru + Chile = war). Since we hated Arequipa, we drove farther to Camana while I was face-smashed with sand and fog through my open window for 18 hours. Needless to say, it was a serious test to our relationship.
I'm gonna have to say we passed it though. Despite all of the problems, the trip somehow turned out to be fun. We saw some amazing festivals and ate delicious food (and drink) in Chile while walking around a nice boardwalk. I tried Alpaca for the first time and it was actually pretty good. We saw the bottom of some nice glasses in Camana drinking our tasty wine and pisco. And we saw some amazing landscapes and talked the whole trip. By then end we could help but laugh at everything that had happened and were in incredibly good spirits. I would do it again - minus the whole mugging, interrogation, stealing thing.
The funniest part of the trip was watching me getting covered in sand when we had to drive through parts of the desert littered with mini sandstorms. AND we also saw a huge tornado, sand tunnel thing literally 20 feet from our car. I kept imagining us getting sucked up into it but Pedro assured me I was just paranoid. I wish I got some good pictures of it.
Two weeks ago it was Halloween. Pedro and I didn't really plan on doing anything serious; both of us were swamped at work and broke after our money was taken so we had planned on watching scary movies on the couch. This plan was changed drastically when his brother who is my age, Enrique, convinced us to go to this huge beach party in a place called Asia. Asia is this community an hour's drive from Lima covered in white, sandy beaches. All of the "celebrities" and richer families of Peru started buying property and housing there until it became this ultra-exclusive club. You have to be approved by the committee before you can purchase property there, and your house can only have so many levels depending on where it is situated on the beach. I felt uber-posh. Everyone who is everyone has a house up here or knows someone who has a house up here.
We went. It was ridiculous. I have not been that drunk in an extremely long time. The club was half-outdoors on the beach front and included all-you-can-drink of hard liquer. We spent the first part of the night bouncing from beach house to beach house and meeting up with this friend or that friend and having shots here or a drink there. The second was at the club. By the time we made it over to Enrique's friend's beach house to grab food and say goodnight to him before heading back to our place the sun was rising. We stayed up that night until about 7am, still drinking. I woke up three hours later and demanded I sleep the rest of my hangover off on the beach. Beautiful, sandy-white private beaches are lined with huge bungalow beach homes, the Hamptons in Peru. I loved every minute of that beach, despite being excessively hungover and getting a horrible sunburn. I was under the impression that "it was still winter, Pedro, it is not going to be sunny." We drove back tired, half-drunk but incredibly happy.
Lucky for me, Asia is where we are spending Christmas this year. And every subsequent weekend after that. Jealous?
Last weekend I had a lovely girls' day with my girlfriend Megan, who I absolutely adore. She is from L.A. but has been living in Peru for the past year and a bit and is exactly like me. We got manicures and pedicures, went home to change, and then went out to a club around the corner from us with our boyfriends where we became absolute embarrassments to the human race. The bottles were S./160.00 (60$ US) so we split one between the four of us while our other friends split some other ones with us as well. We returned home at 5am and spent the subsequent day in death throws. Serves us right, but completely worth it!
My camera card broke, so I can remove it from my camera. I am waiting to go to a market here where I can get a new one (let's compare it to, say, Pacific Mall). Once I've got it, you'll put images to the stories. But so far things have only been getting better and better each week. Summer is just around the corner for us here and I am super excited!
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