This was probably one of the best and worst nights of exchange.
Ok, well, one of the best weekends with one of the scariest experiences.
I went to Barrio Latino, my first real concert ever (that's what I'll call it) although it was also kind of like a music festival and a party. I say that because even though it was a series of artists, they each had there own whole complete show of about an hour that was like a little mini concert. I got to see some of my favorite Latin artists (especially Becky G and Sebastian Yatra) live and was way too excited about it!
First of all, getting my ticket for this thing was a pain in the butt because my debit card wasn't working for a while so I couldn't take money out of an ATM or buy it online, but I finally got it done with the help of my dad and my host parents. That in itself shows how much I wanted to go to this event. I got it the afternoon before, and it was such a relief.
Second of all, I had to figure out who I was going with. I knew I was going to go with a group of exchange friends, but who was the question (there's 2 groups I had to pick from: the French or the Germans). I ended up going alone and would meet everyone there (something I would later discover was a big mistake), as everyone decided by the end to all just meet up in their groups into one big group.
So, the night started when I left my house. I hate to put this on here just because I don't want to scare my family and my friends, but at the same time this is good information to pass on and something that did happen during my exchange and that night. I had my host dad order me an Uber and I left. The taxi driver freaked me out so much. I had never been so scared in my life and I had never lied so much in life (for safety sake of course). He was very confused when I got in the car (as I am clearly not a middle aged Peruvian man) and things went downhill from there as I told him I was using my dad's account. He asked everything about me, and I had to start lying after a while. I told him that I moved to Lima from Chicago for my dad's work, I was 15 years old, my name was Taylor Graham (yes, one of my friends), I don't do absolutely anything but study and have no time for anything because all I do is study. That was my fake story that I went along with. You would think that would have gotten him to leave me alone and stop trying to ask me out or do certain things with such information but I guess I'm a bad liar. I was in texting my host parents the whole time to make sure they were following my location and where the taxi was going. Because it was my host dad's Uber, I couldn't follow the route or anything of the driver, and for a while I thought he was kidnapping me and taking me to another place because we had to go down some very sketchy roads to get to the location. I had never been so scared and about threw up once I got out of that car. My host mom was mad I didn't use the "trick" and pretend to be on a fake phone call but I couldn't think of how to pull that off without obviously faking it. So there's a very small undetailed portion of one of my many lone-foreign-girl-in-a-ginormous-not-super-safe-city stories.
I got out of there, and had to walk about 5 blocks to get to the entrance. There were so many people that the roads were blocked off that far. I got inside, and started texting and calling my French friends, Eugenie, to come and look for me. I wasn't able to find her since she was in the middle of all the people, so I waited outside the "people blob" until the performance going on had ended and she could come find me. Before she found me, the group of Germans saw me and came to save me. I was very excited to see them. After that, we found everyone else so all of us were together.
Everything had been very stressful, but as soon as the fun started, I forgot about absolutely everything bad that had happened that night.
We got in the middle of the people blob with our big group and waited for the next group to start. In order, I got to see: Noriel, Becky G, Manuel Turizo, Nicky Jam, and Sebastian Yatra. I really like all of their music, but like I said, I went for Becky G and Sebastian Yatra. My voice was gone after Becky G and I almost cried when Sebastian Yatra came on. The straps on my backpack broke an hour into the concert after jumping up and down so much. The fact that I was there and I could see them live and watch them perform still... I was just way too excited. You can see that if you watch the 12 minute compilation of videos of me screaming and dancing with my friends I have below. Looking at the videos, it's kind of sad looking at it how much people are on their phones and recording stuff, but even with my bad camera quality I don't regret it a bit. I feared that I would regret "not living in the moment enough" but I think I was definitely living to the fullest in those moments and enjoying an amazing time with my friends and watching some great shows from great performers. They were all so good.
When Sebastian Yatra came on, I went up as far front as I could all by myself. That was a great time I had all to myself. When it was over and I came back to find everyone, my friend Lukas was the only one still there. We shared a taxi and left because I stayed the night with my first host family, or his current host family, as they live much closer and I wanted to go visit them. All of the taxis were so expensive leaving, we couldn't believe it. I couldn't imagine how much it would have cost me to go home in a taxi if I had gone to my house that is super far away. When we got home at 4 am, I went to sleep right away from being tired, but a very good kind of tired that puts you to sleep right away.
The next day I woke up late and had breakfast with my host family. I was so happy to be there and visit them and be able to share that time with them that brought me back to old times that were the beginning of my exchange. We had sandwiches and some delicious orange juice my host mom made. The rest of the day was very lazy and relaxing. First, we sorted through our coin collections. It sounds boring, but Lukas and I both have a book that our Rotary Club President gifted us that has a spot for all of the special 1 sol coins, and you have to fill it. My host mom has a whole can of her own that she collects, so we all sat down and went through our books to fill them up with coins that she did have but we didn't. Like I would always do with that host family, we sat down and watched a horror movie. This time we watched The Babysitter and The Conjuring 2. After that, we went out to eat pollo a la brasa for a late lunch. From there, my host host parents dropped Lukas and I off at the bus station to go to my current house. He was going to visit his first host family while I was going home. Well, my other home, his other home, it's all very confusing.
Before we went home, we met up with my friend Kata in Plaza San Miguel, the nearby mall. Even though we had just eaten, Kata had not, and we were there to eat more. We first went to Kata and I's favorite ice cream place, Zuggatti's. After that, we all walked around some before going to eat makis, which is basically sushi. It wasn't long before we all went home. There, I shared a Pisco with my host family and Lukas and I told them all about Barrio Latino.
I love pollo a la brasa, and I love ice cream, and I love makis, I love Pisco, and I love my friends and family. It was a well-needed day after such an eventful night before. Despite some scary experiences, it was one of the best weekends between an incredible night with friends and relaxing day with family.