Andre’s in Peru!

For my birthday, I had a nice, relaxed dinner with Hansel and his parents, my Peruvian family. I’d been wanting to cook for them and show Paty and Alex the apartment. It was fun to improvise the meal (was thinking Indian, then decided Italian, and it ended up mostly French), and I was happy to show off my cooking skillz a bit - made a wine-y pork-y onion and garlic and herbs stew that was pretty good! Like any self-respecting French cook,  I consumed a good amount of wine as I waited for them to show up -  we didn’t end up eating till after 930 - and I spontaneously got the urge to cruise around my neighborhood on my new used skateboard that I’d bought earlier that day. It turns out that skateboarding is just as difficult as I remember from my previous failed attempts as a kid. I played it cool for the passersby when the board didn’t cooperate, got stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, or completely whizzed out from under me. I’d been inspired the day before when Jeff and I stumbl...

Mom called it. After the excitement of being in a new place and making friends, I miss home. I miss the effortless enjoyment of Emily's company. I miss my friends, the fall leaves, Olive. I miss my weekly talks with Mom and Pierre That has been hitting me pretty hard lately, although I don't mean to suggest there haven't been plenty of bright spots, too. I'm still finding my way at work, and trying to find/create a community of friends here that I can do things like climb with. Sometimes it seems like a lot of the Peruvians I meet want to go to malls and clubs, which isn't really my scene :/ So I'm going to keep looking around for friend prospects. This may sound confusing because I have my best friend Jeff with me, but we realized a while ago that we needed our own space for various reasons, including being able to speak more Spanish. We are still working at Hipolito, although this week we were asked to help out with a quality control project involving anothe...