Hello again.
Yes, I know, I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping things updated these past two months. Unfortunately, I could not come up with a better excuse than the fact that a mix of trips, schoolwork, and politics have kept me from writing for whatever reasons.
To make things a little easier to recap, let's start with the most recent thing.
As this week was Thanksgiving in the United States, all of us exchange students had a Thanksgiving party at our program director's house. Our host families were invited because this party doubled as the end of the semester banquet. Some of the students even had actual family members visiting this week, so they got to join in on the fun.The banquet was set up like a pot luck, so each family brought a different dish. I made my mom's pumpkin cheesecake recipe, which went over very well, even though I had to use fresh pumpkin puree instead of canned which made the flavor a little different.
After we had all eaten our fill, each of us students went up and each gave a short speech about what we were thankful for, thanking our families for taking care of us during this whole semester. Even though my Spanish is just fine, I always think that whenever I speak publicly that what I am saying doesn't make coherent sense, but Marion assured me that my speech was great.
Earlier this week, I was beginning to prepare for my finals. Most of my classes only have a final project to turn in. One of my classes I have already technically finished, even though we still have one more class. My Quechua class has a final next week, and in another class I have a final project due.
Last weekend, we went camping. Not like middle of nowhere camping, but at a religious retreat. Though our trip was not for any sort of religious reasons, our program did spend the weekend with about 40 sixth graders from the school which I have volunteered at this past semester teaching English. The weather was wonderfully sunny, and I managed to get a lot of writing done. I also got along well with a lot of the students thanks to my love of Steven Universe and Adventure Time, cartoon shows that are as popular in the States as they are here in Peru. I also wowed a few kids with my origami skills. The most eventful part of the trip was when we taught the kids how to make smores. Imagine the chaos of dozens of 11 year olds crowded around a bonfire much too large to be cooking anything, and burning marshmallows on sticks as well as several of their arm hairs. Overall, it was a fun and memorable weekend.
The weekend before that, I went to the movies with two of my friends and we saw Doctor Strange. I was surprised by how funny it actually was, and the visuals were amazing. This week I am going to see Fantastic Beasts, which I have been excited for for about two years.
During the first two weeks of November, I spent the majority of my time hanging out, drawing, watching Netflix, and explaining the politics of my country to pretty much everyone. It is difficult to argue political points in a foreign language, no matter how good you are at it, because you always know you could discuss it better in your first language. The night of the election I stayed up late in order to watch the results live. This made giving the presentation for my class the next morning difficult. I apologized to the professor for being a distracted. He said he understood.
This is where I will end this post because the most notable thing that happened before this was my trip to Cuzco, which I will be including a lot of pictures of. So in the interest of not making this too long, I will see you in the next post.
