PS Please see blog ¨Need help!¨below

That´s probably more important for now. Thanks!

My Monday

So today was some Catholic holiday of San Pedro or another. Anyways, what´s really important is that I got the day off from training! Yippee! So I decided to walk along the highway for a mile or so to a pool that I see everyday while riding the Peruvian bus. (I wanted to see if they also had an indoor pool for me to do lap swim, but no such luck.)

Instead, what I encountered walking back was a vicious dog on the side of the highway who was ready to bite off my leg. (Dogs here are really vicious and everywhere. The only way you can fend them off is by throwing rocks at them.) Unfortunately, I didn´t have any rocks on me and the ground was littered with only pebbles. So I started to feign throwing rocks at the dog hoping that it would go away. No such luck. The damn dog would make the motion of dodging the non'existant rock and then growl more angrily. Just when I thought I was doomed to be attacked by some stupid dog on the side of the highway, a person saw what was happening and came to my rescue. Whew! Boy, I bet I looked so stupid...some short little Asian girl throwing imaginary rocks at a growling dog on the side of the highway.

But the real stupid part was that instead of walking the Peruvian highway which is littered with a mess of speeding cars, I could have just ridden the bus for .50 soles (ie .17 US cents). The stupid things that I try to scrooge on in order to save money.

Hope your Monday was less adventurous! Aye...

Need help!

Does anyone have a truly easy, but fabulous cookie recipe? So one of the volunteers made some chocolate chip coconut cookies today and my family went crazy for them. They were sugary and tasty, but quite frankly, hard as a rock! I think we can do better! Cookies here are different (ie not very good and not American style...think gooey chocolate chip). I even taught them to dunk the cookies into milk (evaporated milk, of course, as refrigerated milk doesn´t really exist here).

Anyways, my family doesn´t use the oven because it costs so much in gas for even a one time use. But they were so impressed with the cookies that a. I was sad that I only managed to confiscate 7 of them in my little baggie (Yes, times are tough and I have a family to feed so I snuck as much as I could in my little baggy) and b. They´ll even let me use the oven this one time just to bake some American cookies.

So, no pressure, but does anyone have a good, but easy, cookie recipe? I´ve never been a great cook to know a cookie recipe off the top of my head. Except for fancy things like peanut butter, shortening or lard, I think I should be able to find most things. However, money is tight so I would appreciate a short, but delicious recipe. PLEASE help if you can via comment or e-mail khui1234@hotmail.com. The fate of one Peruvian family´s cookie hunger depends on it. I will then post photos of my creation...if successful.

Lima...

Our first trip to the capital city. For the next month or two, we will be going there every Saturday. Here we are directly above the ocean. It's winter time here in Lima and I think we were all confused on how to dress. I've posted a few pictures below. Hope everything is well with you all.

...Lima!

Peruvian sushi! Aww... This was my most expensive meal, yet. Thirty soles or $10 US for 10 pieces of sushi of 2 different types. I saved up two weeks for this extravagant meal and it was heavenly! However, I think I will be eating a lot cheaper meals from now on.

...Lima!

Here we are at the center of Lima. It is a farcry from Yanacoto. Out yonder we can see the President's house to the left and through the yellow buildings lies a sacred building...Dunkin' Donuts! It boasts a free munchkin with every latte order.

Lima!

Here we are in Peru's own Chinatown.
I would like to think that I am a Chinatown connoisor having been to a few. As such, Peruvian Chinatown is different. For one, there are quite a few shops and Chinese restaurants...but a lot of them run by Peruvians. There is even Peruvian dim sum, but again, served by Peruvians!!! When there were Chinese there, they spoke either very little Chinese or none at all. Chinese Peruvians! Very odd indeed. I only found a few people to practice my Chinese with, and believe me, I dragged those conversations out to the max!