happy birthday.

Today is my sister camille's 25th birthday. yup, first one I've ever missed. ;-( So yah, Happy Birthday Camille. Love you so much. And if I was with you right now, I'd totally be saying all of this in Spanish. haha

Anyways, today was fun. Went to the center of Lima with India, Honore, and an exchange student from Arequipa. It was really cool. Bought a few gifts for those back home;-) and I ate a bajillion different sweets (churros, cake, ice cream, DUNKIN DONUTS) it was awesome. And we summed all the sweets up by saying that it is our obligation to eat unhealthy, because we are only here for one year... so why not. ;-)

We went to a market that was 2 stories high and about as big as my high school (or bigger) back home. There were tons of stores crammed in within eachother and all I wanted to do was take out my wallet and buy everything. From fake real sized llamas to inca-kola in miniature bottles. The mess was almost overwhelming.

India had her fun at going around asking people how much things cost, bargaining for 10 minutes with them to get to the lowest price she could, and then ultimately confessing that she was never going to buy it in the first place. Trust me, this is definitely one of the things we do for fun down here. ;-)

Came back tonight and gave a presentation for rotary over Maras and Moray. Basically two places where we are going to go on our trip to Cusco. So weird that I can do an entire presentation in front of people in a different language. But hey, I've seen stranger things...

Speaking of, after the markets today we wound up in some sort of museum. India wanted to enter because it was free;-) We went in... and all it was was strange art of glass bottles smashed on top of opened suitcases. It was very strange, and very dark.

At first I thought we were in a gallery of dark art. And I believed that for about 30 minutes. Walking through rooms filled with masks of disfigured faces and costumes of cows with faces of pigs. It was strange.

But in the end, finally we were disturbed enough to ask what the event was. Turns out it was the 40th year anniversary of some theatre/art group. Man was I glad to find that out.

Loving Peru more and more. Especially since I bought a map today and can actually see the country I'm in. ;-) Time to start checking off all the places I've been. Chau!

Blessings,

Lucas