Great Rice Balls of Fire!

LIST # ONE - THINGS I STARTED GETTING A LITTLE TIRED OF (don't worry, the next list is optimistic!):

1. Rice

2. Bread with butter (I miss eating cereal for breakfast)

3. My entire wardrobe being one giant WOC (translation = Wear-Out-Clo = wearing the same clothes basically every day)

4. Really gross humidity mixed with cold weather that makes me all sweaty and completely shivery and freezing at the same time. Its like a 24/7/5 (5 = five months out of the year) fever

5. Putting toilet paper in the trash (I'm telling you, its just weird. (reference: “and the one with the walking stick is just plain weird”))

6. People asking me what I think of the food in Peru (Peruvians are a little obsessed with food. For anyone who is interested, I do like it. I like it all. Except Jell-O. That I cannot handle).

7. Lack of my mother’s Caesar salad =(

LIST # TWO - THINGS I'M NOT YET TIRED OF:

1. Really cheap stuff

2. “Dancing” (well, that’s what I call it, but I can’t really do it very well, hence the quotation marks)

3. Looking at Peruvians (not in a creepy way. I just like the color of their skin. And the way they dress.)

4. Peruvian public transportation (it will always be somewhat of a mystery to me)

5. Smaller amounts of homework (even though it takes me forever because I haven’t exactly mastered the language)

6. Spanish (sometimes it makes more sense than English)

7. The fact that if I show up ten minutes late for class, no one is there yet. Including the teacher.

8. The fact that people here aren’t obsessed with their phones

9. Manjar blanco (extremely delicious thing that tastes sort of like caramel but much more delicious)

10. Writing pointless blog entries

LIST # THREE - CRAZY THINGS THE PSYCHO DOG PICCINA HAS DONE

1. Chewed the carpet up (more than once)

2. Ate dead pigeons that she found outside

3. Found a packet of pills, chewed it up, ingested ten of them, and then threw up all over the place

4. Got into the liquor cabinet and was uncorking a bottle of rum with her teeth when someone discovered her. (I tried to get the family to send her to AA but they didn't take the idea very well)

LIST # FOUR - TRIPS TO THE MIGRATIONS OFFICE

1. First experience with Peruvian bureaucracy. Went in with high hopes. Denied opportunity for student visa because we had no proof we were enrolled in classes. Days running out on tourist visa. Feeling a little bit stressed out.

2. A couple weeks later. Return to office with enrollment form and present all documents. Our acceptance letter to the university in Peru (which is not even required in the first place, I don't know why we needed to show it to them), is in English, and that bothers the lady. She refuses to do anything for us until we have a copy of it in Spanish. Run back to the university to acquire a copy of the letter. Feeling a little pissed off.

3. Approximately one hour later. Back at migrations. Another document needs to be translated to Spanish, so we handwrite it (apparently that's more valid). Go to bank of the nation to pay for change in visa status. Luckily, man accepts our concoction of some necessary, some superfluous, and some handwritten documents (all in Spanish of course). Fingerprint some forms. Transaction can't be processed yet, so man demands we return in 30 days. Beginning to think I'm not wanted in Peru.

4. 30 days later. Denied visa again because apparently it hasn’t actually been thirty days yet. We weren’t supposed to count weekends or holidays (by the way, Mr. Migrations Man, thanks for warning us). Thinking of pitching a tent outside Migrations office.

5. October 12th: next test of fate. Wish me luck. Mother, father, if I randomly show up at your door, don’t be shocked, it's probably just because I've been deported.