Fun Day with Anny Medina

With my counselor, Anny, I spent another lovely Sunday. It was a great and eventful day that was full of so much fun and firsts!

She first picked me up around 1:30, and I took my first excursion on the bus system here! The first bus, the little one, picked us up in front of our apartment building and we rode that to the big bus station. I cost 50 centimos (about 17 cents) to get to the first bus station. Then it cost s/2.50 (about 80 cents) on the big bus to get from our station to the other. I found that pretty cool that it only cost me about a dollar to get from my house to another side of Lima where my counselor lives. It was adventurous roaming around on those buses, especially the first one. The first one was more just sketchy though. And very crammed with people.

After a while on the bus we went to a supermarket to get lunch. There, they had a buffet full of many different foods. I got lasagna, mashed potatoes, some rice, chow mien, other veggies and fruit. After lunch, we also looked around the supermarket for box mac and cheese, since I told her my favorite food was mac and cheese. When we found it, I was so excited, literally all I had wanted for the last month was some mac and cheese. It was in the box like Kraft mac and cheese, so nothing great, but it was still mac and cheese.

After that, we walked to her house, which was a lovely walk. The sun was out, and that just made me so happy. Once we got there, we got down to business; business being her doing councilor stuff and me telling her about life. I didn't have much to tell just because I haven't had many problems since being here.

After we talked for a while, I just hung out with her family and some other friends. I also played with their cat a lot. There, was her son and daughter, Christian and Grace were there, as well as one of Grace's exchange friends and his girlfriend. It was really cool getting to talk to the two of them, because he was on exchange in Kalamazoo and lives there now because he studies in an American university. His girlfriend he met while on exchange, and she also lives there. They were here in Peru visiting his family. Where they live isn't too different from where I'm from, so it was nice getting to talk about home with them and have someone understand all the things I'm talking about.

After hanging out for a while, we headed out into downtown Lima. I'm not sure exactly what area we were in, but it was new to me and I was excited to go explore it! There, went into a park full of water fountains, and we stayed there for a few hours. It was an amazing place full of so many beautiful things. It was a lot of fun, all of the different fountains they had and activities there were with them. There were ones you could walk through, fountains to stand in, changing colors. Later on, there was a show on one of the fountains, which was so cool. It was just a video of Peruvian culture and history projected onto one of the fountains. But there was so much different stuff with the water that made it a really cool little show.

After hanging around there for a while, we headed back to the house. There, the real fun was awaiting: a game of Risk and a BBQ. I said that I really liked board games, and that my favorite board game was Risk. And apparently, Christian also really likes board games, and his favorite board game is Risk; so we all went back to the house to play a game of Risk. Totally disregarding the fact that it was after 8:00, I had school in the morning, and that Risk takes hours to play. But it's ok. I was getting to play Risk, which is one of my favorite things to do. Although, this game was a little different. Of course everything was in Spanish, which made it different, but they way the cards worked to accumulate more troops was based on this star system instead of having sets. In Risk in America, the amount of troops you get for each set turned in gets bigger as the game goes on. But in this game, you just get cards with a certain number of stars on them, and however many stars you turn in (which can be as many as you want) is based on how many troops you get. Even though it was a little different, it was still very fun. I ended up getting 2nd out of 5, and the game went on for not quite 3 hours. The game would have gone on longer, but towards the end everyone just kind of got out at the same time. That happened, because they realized how late it was and just wanted to end the game at that point. While all of this was going on, we were also having a little BBQ. Anny's other sons came over to grill and hang out, so we all sorts of food and snacks to feast on while everyone was focused in on the game.

The game was over when I got out, so it was time for me to go home. Christian and his fiancé drove me home while they were on their way home, because going on the buses after 11:00 at night would be real sketchy. When I got home, even though I was exhausted, I was so happy. It's the kind of happy where you're sad that the day is over, but you're also happy that the day happened anyway because you're so tired. And you just crash. Very hard. Because it was a great day!