Once Hillary had been dropped off at the airport on Saturday, there were many other activities that my host parents had planned for the day.
First stop was a museum. My brother Jahir, Sarah, my cousin Anita and I went while my host parents did some shopping. The museum was focused on terrorism in Peru, which was very prominent between 1980 and 2000. After learning what had happened in the museum, I would tend to call it genocide rather than terrorism. What happened was back when Peru was a communist country, there was a regime that was focused on eliminating the native population- or anybody who didn't agree with what they were enforcing. I had no idea that it happened. What I learned in the museum were things I had never learned before. I didn't even know Peru used to be a communist country. It bothers me so much that I never learned any of this stuff about South America in school, especially just coming out of my AP World History class. You learn so much about Europe and Africa, but what ever happened to South America? All this time I thought it was just chilling, when people in Peru were being slaughtered by the village! Just a suggestion for the people in charge of curriculum...
After going to the museum, my brain was fried since it was all in Spanish and I had to look at a lot of pictures and reread a lot of the words to figure out what happened. But the day wasn't over! A birthday party for my host dad's cousin was next. We went back to the apartment to put anything away that we wouldn't need, and because the car was acting up. The steering went out, so it wasn't really capable of being driven. It's a bummer that the car stopped working, because there was a Rotary BBQ Sarah and I were supposed to go to yesterday, but couldn't go to since the car had problems. But today, it is fixed, and we are headed to training camp! Since we were already going to the birthday party on Saturday, we got a taxi, and headed on over.
At the party, there was an abundance of cousins and aunts and uncles. This was the whole other half of my family! When we first got there, we ate a meal of fried rice and chicken that had been marinated with pineapple. It was very good! I believe my great aunt made it. The rest of the time was mostly dancing. The adults were drinking some; it takes a couple drinks before they really dance. Jahir, Sarah, and I practiced Spanish while everyone else danced. But of course, we had to dance at some point. I was a little self conscious, because us Americans cannot dance! It's just not common in the United States. Never have I had a family birthday party where everybody was dancing. It was fun! I had a great time being able to mover around some and spend time with the family. They also put on some American music for us to dance to, but I prefer the Latino music. It's much more dance-able.
After being there for a few hours, it was time to go home. After walking a couple blocks to get out of the alleys, there was a taxi waiting for us. They all use EasyTaxi, since it is the most safe. It's similar to Uber, but they don't use Uber here since they don't do background checks. When we got home, I got into my comfy clothes and watched a scary movie with Sarah and Jahir. I've never been a fan of horror movies, but they're growing on me... I probably shouldn't be saying that since I know Cat and Natilie are going to read this and make me watch a bunch of horror movies when I come back to the States... They haven't scarred me too much yet!
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