June 20 OR “nobody’s rubbing their cuy on me”

So I know I said I wouldn’t bother explaining the quotes, but this one is me so I can. We got into a conversation about these healer/witch doctor type people that advertise their services in a lot of the papers. Giovana, my language instructor, told a story about how they will rub a live cuy (Spanish for guinea pig) over your body, kill it and inspect its entrails in order to find the cause of whatever happens to ail you. See above for my response……

So we had Spanish class at my house Monday morning. I got to show my house to some friends and it’s always fun to have class in a different place. We also had to go wander around in the streets at one point to ask questions of strangers; pretty much part of our routine anymore :-P After class I had to wait for my lunch; which put us a little behind, so Kelsey and I decided to take a mototaxi. Imagine a little vehicle about the size of a golf cart crossed with a motorized tricycle….that’s a mototaxi. It’s the Peruvian version of a tuk tuk. The floor vibrates the entire time and there was some doubt about it successfully getting up some of the larger hills. Kelsey and I felt the need to laugh the whole time. Terrible in terms of us trying not to be tourists, but an absolute blast. ☺ On the way home from class a few of us stopped at a little tienda and got some “wine;” which reminded me of carbonated Dimetapp. Um…… Yummy?

Warning: this is where the reading gets not so nice. There are stray dogs everywhere in our town, so it was bound to happen, but a dog got hit right next to the porch we were sitting on. Apart from being a truly terrible noise; the culture shock came when none of the locals seems shocked at all. I don’t mean that to sound judgmental of them either. The fact is that we do not have as many dogs in the States and therefore do not see this as often. It was hard to hold it together though. Then when the dog found its way under the table next to us to die I decided it was time to go. Fortunately my younger host brother decided to entertain me by asking me for an English lesson, so my day didn’t end on a bad note.