Well, this is officially the first Christmas I have spent away from home. Due primarily to the hot weather, and of course the absence of loved ones, it doesn’t feel much like the Holidays. I think one of the things I will miss the most while I’m here are the seasons. They claim they have them but I don’t think that a 10 degree fluctuation in temperature and a slight increase in precipitation counts.
If I gained weight this holiday season it will have resulted solely from an astonishing consumption of hot chocolate. For the past two weeks I have been drinking it for both breakfast and dinner. Add that to the 7 chocolatadas I have attended in the past 3 days and you have around 40 cups of hot chocolate. A chocolatada is a Christmas party held primarily for children in which large quantities of hot chocolate, panettone and/or empanadas are served. Within my tiny town/settlement every organization has held a chocolatada with seemingly little to no coordination among them. Thus, both the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas were passed with 3 chocolatadas per day, one at 3, the next at 4, and the final one at 5.
There are times here when I feel like I’m living in the midst of a Bill Bryson or perhaps David Sedaris collection of short stories. Actually, it’s pretty much all of the time. I’ve decided that this is due solely to my own personal sense of humor, a sense of humor which I may share with many of my friends and family but which does not appear to transfer smoothly into Peruvian culture. Thus, I frequently find myself laughing at what must be horribly inappropriate moments. For example, I laughed when I was handed the 3 L bottle of chicha. And I laughed the other day when I accidentally threw a rambunctious 2 year old over my shoulder into the midst of a mother’s meeting because he was holding on for dear life to a mouthful of my hair and wouldn’t let go. Of course the mother’s were all paying attention to the meeting and are probably still wondering what provoked me to fling the child aggressively into the dirt.
My recent visit to the municipality also made me laugh despite the fact that I know I should have been experiencing feelings of extreme mortification. It was basically a dreadful scene. First, for the duration of the incident I lost all abilities to form coherent sentences or even bursts of logical Spanish. Upon entering, I was met by a random man who told me that he could help me as the mayor was in a meeting. Thinking that he was just some random man I proceeded to get confused and rather than politely and logically asking him who he was I popped my head into the secretary’s office and asked her who he was. Yes, he was still standing right there. It turns out he’s second-in-line to the mayor so I most definitely offended him. Furthermore, on my written request for paint I spelled the mayor’s name incorrectly. Rather than Felix Gil Mayanga I had written (in all caps of course) FELIX JILMA YANGA. So much for my attempt at maintaining an air of professionalism!
Note: My friend Susan was recently gifted a ginormous double headed cauliflower while attempting to exercise at her site.
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