my favorite things people said in peru

1 the first night we arrived, it was new year's eve, and we were driving through a crowded plaza in a crowded car-- me, rian, rian's brother, rian's mother, their cousin, and the cousin's girlfriend. a police officer tried to pull us over, but the cousin's girlfriend (who i later learned also works as a police officer, i think) let loose a torrent of spanish on him. "MI NOVIO" pointing to her boyfriend in the driver's seat, "MI FAMILIA," gesturing around at us, and a bunch of other things i didn't understand. i'm not sure why i liked it so much. i guess just the forcefulness with which she said it, the way she took charge of the situation. i loved it.

everyone who was in the car minus rian's mother:

2 after a few days in lima, we took a city tour on the mirabus. our seats were the very first row of seats on the top deck of the double decker bus, which was a little intimidating because there was just a big plastic window in front of us. but the bus took us to downtown lima and we saw some pretty buildings and we also got to go to circuito magico del agua, which is basically a park with a bunch of cool fountains (a really tall jet stream, a row of arches that you can walk under, a fountain & light show, concentric rings of jets that turn off and on for children to run around in, & more). no one drinks water in lima (we had to buy bottled water whenever we wanted it), but they'll wait in line and pay admission to see huge fountains of it. the tour guide on the bus was explaining about the park to us. she told us we could walk under the archway of fountains without getting wet unless someone touched the fountain. but who would touch the fountain? maybe "a children. a miskevous children." she had a cute spanish accent and i thought it was the most hilarious thing i've ever heard.

us walking under the fountain in question (we didn't get too wet):

some miskevous children about to get SOAKED in a few seconds when streams of water jet up from the circles of light:

one of the pretty buildings we saw on the tour:

3 rian would always get mad at himself because in conversation with people he would always say the wrong thing, even when he knew the right thing. when he first met the cousin's girlfriend referred to above, he said "me gusta" instead of "mucho gusto." i don't know if you're familiar with spanish, but one means "i like it" and the other means "a pleasure to meet you." his crowning achievement, however, was really one night in cuzco. we had eaten in a restaurant and as we were leaving he said, "buenos días" to our waiter. the waiter said "buenas noches" back. this prompts another tirade: "why can i never get it right!" then we take a taxi back to our hotel. as we get out of the taxi, rian says "muchas gracias! buenas tardes!" i laughed for about a thousand years.

us in the main square in cuzco where we had dinner (notice the lights on the mountain in the background.):