Huayno y Chicha

School today wasn't bad. My friend Brandon, who is from Buffalo, gave us a brief history on buffalo wings in Spanish, which is quite impressive. My professor also drew a terrible map of the Americas, so all in all a solid morning.

The map.

At UNIFE today we had a lecture by an architect named Juan Eduardo De Orellana Rojas. He's really important, so he has so many names. Actually it's because everyone here has two last names, but that's less cool to say.

After the lecture, the rest of the Northeasterners had to present. We have presentations about the book we had to read for the trip. Everyone has to do one little section. My friend Michaela and I had a section about Huayno and Chicha. Our presentation went pretty well, although I had planned to play this song and it didn't work at all. Anyway, both Huayno and Chicha are music types that began by the Andean people who migrated from the mountains into the cities. Music was a way for the people to stay in touch with their roots. Chicha evolved from Huayno and is still common today. It's more mainstream, but my host mom still doesn't like it, and she likes all music.

Dinner with Diego was fascinating as always. He told me how there are actually nine Santa Clauses and they all live in Finland. I guess everything I've ever known about Santa has been a lie. Thanks mom and dad. He only sat with us for a little because Wednesday nights he has a meeting with his motorcycle gang. He's the president, so he's kind of obligated to go. Otherwise I think he could sit and talk to us all night. The other dinner highlight were the bananas. My host mom gave us special Peruvian bananas. They were called Apple Bananas and they were literally a cross between the two fruits. They were sweeter than regular bananas and I could taste the apple flavor. But they had this weird almost powder-y after taste, and I couldn't tell if I liked it or not.

Otros Hechos Peruanos

• Lucuma. It's a fruit from the Andean Valleys here and it's really popular. I've had it several times in different forms. Lucuma ice cream is good. It was also the frosting to a cake my host mom made. It has an almost maple syrup like taste. It's really hard to describe, but it's really good with chocolate and carmel.

  

  Chocolate Lucuma Cake

• I've mentioned that the drivers here honk for everything. But I learned that it's illegal to honk your horn unless it's an emergency situation. Clearly the police have bigger concerns, but I think it's pretty funny that it's actually a law.
• The altitude of Cuzco is 3400 meters. That's pretty high. When I climbed Mount Olympus, I was at 3000 meters, so this is only a little higher. Some people are nervous about altitude sickness, but I'm prepared to take it like a champ. Bring it on Cuzco!
• I've always learned that Maiz is the word for corn. Here it's choclo. Same with aqui, here it's aca and alli here is aya. Novio/a doesn't mean boyfriend or girlfriend, but the person to whom you're engaged. And to think, I thought that Northeastern education was gonna help me.