thoughts on culture...

cultural moments that i´ve experienced in the last week:

• pervians love music. LOVE dancing, singing, playing instruments. the other day we had lunch with the entire hospice staff and they welcomed us so beautifully! after everyone was done eating, they pulled out an old boom box and serached for some good dancin´tunes on the radio. then everyone got up and started dancing!! can you picture this in the u.s.--after a work-sponsored luncheon, everyone gets up in their scrubs and suits and starts dancing with eachother!? the ceo and the cleaning staff kickin´up their heels together. so wonderful.
• we had our first fiesta last night! we threw a despedida for emily and nicole, the two missionaries who are headed home next week. but this was not just any party...we danced, **NONSTOP, from 9 pm to 5 am, when we finally had to turn off the music and kick the remaining partiers out! we are totally exhausted today, but some of our new friends invited us to go out to a discoteca again tonight. i swear, pervians do not need sleep! (**note: i lied, i did sneak off of the dance floor for about an hour, around 3 am. i spent my little break talking to 2 of my new friends, each in their late 50s or 60s, about peruvian politics and the role of the u.s. government in international poverty issues, making this not only one of the most fun, but also the most enlightening parties i have ever been to)
• i had a beautiful ¨this is peru at it´s finest¨ moment today. we went over to the church this afternoon to help prepare for a youth fundraiser that´s happening tomorrow. they are having a ¨cuyada¨. although most of you would consider cuy a pet, in peru it is a ceremonial treat--roasted guinea pig. words cannot even describe how wonderful this scene was, but i will try...we walked through the kitchen to a back patio. about five older pervuvian women circled around a sack of potatoes the size of a peruvian adult. they were peeling thousands of potatoes with dull butcher knives and throwing them into the largest pot i have ever seen. and hanging above them, a laundry line, with pink underwear on one end, and the on other, hundreds of skinned, gutted guinea pigs hanging out to dry!!! it was such a wonderful moment...one of those images that will remain with me forever as an image of the real peru...and i had to stop and remind myself that this is a pretty unremarkable scene to them, but to me, it was infinitely beautiful. on a slight note of irony, i ate a piece of candy today, and on the inside of the wrapper, this message: try something new tomorrow. somehow, i doubt whether the writer of that little tidbit of advice was thinking that eating guinea pig would be the adventure to try, but i will take it to heart anyway and eat it with a smile on my face!