Father’s Day

So for Father’s Day I spent the day with all the men of Sr. Julio’s family. I also had my first experience with the concept of “Peru time.” Which mostly refers to how things run late all the time, but no one is bothered by it. Coming from the States, this runs counter to a key point in my upbringing. At home you show up on time to show respect for the other person, but around here those two concepts are not linked. Arriving late is not seen as disrespectful. I was asked to be at the breakfast table at 7:15, so naturally I am there at 7:10 (I’m looking at you Garry Tucker). We didn’t leave the house until around 8:30 and our 10 am soccer game started around 12:30. The funny thing is that I speak so little Spanish right now that my only option is to go with the flow. Not that I would’ve said anything, but it’s an amazing way to quickly adjust to this sort of schedule. On the way we stopped to collect various family members, so I road next to one of the cousins that speaks English. He told me he was too nervous to think of many things to say, which made me feel better because that’s how I felt in Spanish :-P His English was great though and the rest of family just watched us like a circus act. Love being the Gringa!

We ended up in a town that is called Jicamarca. Or at least I think that’s the name, I never saw it written. I sat with one of the aunts and her daughter Stephanie. Stephanie is a ten-year-old girl; this means she sat next to me and asked every question she could think of for about two hours. Ha ha ha….might sound terrible to some, but I was so happy to have someone that wanted to wade through my Spanish and it was great practice! All the guys were very polite to me, but they were way more interested in killing each other on the soccer pitch. A sentiment I fully supported; the game was fun to watch. We went back to some family member’s house (don’t judge, I met about 30 people that day) to eat. I had more food handed to me than I knew what to do with and it turns out that was just the snack. Because I was then served a mound of rice with roughly half a duck on top of it. Ok. I’m exaggerating just a little, but really my plate could’ve fed at least two people. We ate really quickly because Luis needed to get home to leave for school. Funny tidbit, some of the older tias thought I was Luis’s wife. That was fun…or awkward; but then those two are one and the same in my life anymore. So why worry :-P