Gringo Fiesta at the English Pub - now I feel integrated

Here's the highlights of my past couple days. 


I got my first manicure Tuesday night! Raquel and I went to the salon across the street and I got a mani and she got a mani-pedi. Total cost? 50 soles. Or 20 dollars. That's what I'm talkin' bout girrrfriend!


Yesterday I had to give my presentation for Linguistica Amazonica. It first he told me to do it in English, but then when I double checked with him last week, he decided maybe it would be better for me to do my powerpoint in English and talk in Spanish. The class is 2 hours long, and my powerpoint presentation over the Tupi language family was the only topic we were discussing. So I was hoping it would involve a lot of him interrupting and adding stuff, to fill up the time and luckily it did. So it wasn't too bad at all. The text that it was over was in English, so I basically just had to pick out the main points and put them in a powerpoint and then translate it into Spanish. I was kind of nervous because I'm the only gringa in the class and I was the first one to do the presentation, but at least I got it over with!


During last night's Quechua class I learned that we have a midterm next week. How do you say "Oh, shit!" in Quechua?


I also have a 5-pg paper due Monday, a 1-2 pg paper due Tuesday. This is definitely making up for the previous slacker weeks. 


Last night, about 4 different universities in Lima hosted an international student party at the English Pub in Miraflores. They had special invitations printed and everything. Raquel's university, Universidad del Pacifico was doing it too, so we decided to go. We went with a couple other exchange students, Dawn, Susannah, and Mary as well. 
The whole idea was a little entertaining. Apparently it was an "integration" activity, but only integration with other Europeans and Americans, and what's more, in an English Pub. It was really fun, though. And we were able to trade our invitations for a pitcher of beer! (The pitchers here are smaller than in America, but it was still a pretty good deal!) By the end of the night, they were giving us free pitchers. I'm not really sure why. Apparently they thought it was a good idea to give a bunch of German, Dutch and American college boys free beer. Why not? 
We ended up getting home around 2:45, so I got a good 4 hours of sleep before having to go volunteer today. I actually felt better than I expected though, and today was a pretty easy day. After recess, they had part of their spring celebration, so we just went out to the basketball court and watched the different classes have bicycle races. 


Then Nichole and I went to la Catolica for the weekly ISA meeting. That took awhile, and finally at 3 we got some lunch on campus. After that we headed to Polvos Azules because I needed to get Fitzcarraldo, a movie that I'm supposed to write my paper about the rubber boom for my Amazonian Ethnography class. I got it! Along with season 2 of Modern Family and Hip Hop Abs (pretty excited about that one). I was smarter this time though, and had him test Fitzcarraldo out on the TV to make sure it worked, and grabbed the cards for the other guys in case some of the discs didn't work. Fool me once!