Things You Put in Your Mouth

All praise holy lime! All praise holy palta!

It's been 4 weeks since getting back from Cusco and 4 weeks since last writing anything.  The reason for missing a two week interval is that we haven’t done much that requires camera in hand.  Instead we've been settling into some type of groove, which is exactly what I wanted, but I don't have shit for photos in these four weeks.  I told myself that I had to take some photos of palta (avocado), coca leaves for tea, papaya juice, and other such things that I spend much time thinking about in my day-to-day.

La Trilogía de Ceviche

My schedule has become 2 hours of taking Spanish class each morning, and then since the class is in a café, I stick around and read 2 hours of some book in Spanish.  Then I eat a big Peruvian vegetarian lunch. Then I go home and watch something in Spanish. Our room has a tv with cable, which is filled with Hollywood trash that I'm now watching and calling it work. I've watched more rom-coms in a month here than in a normal year.  But, the greatest discovery has been watching movies and shows on netflix with Spanish dubbed and Spanish subtitles. So we've watched Homeland and Justified.  I loved watching Homeland's first season, and I couldn't get through even season one of Justified.

My knee has been stiff as all hell.  I think it is fine, but I got a lead on some physical therapy sessions today.  Megan was envious of my limp stiffness (that's dirty), so she broke her toe just so we appear like clowns walking down the street together.  She visited the doctor, and he says it will be fine, but she was stuck inside this weekend more than she wanted to be. 

Coca leaves dropped in hot water and lime

I've also heard more discopop songs than in a long damn time.  The night drinking life is built completely around a Saturday night binge, so I'm playing right along and doing my part.  I do wish that there were more casual bars for some early evening drinking instead of just one night of 4am drinking.  With the knee injury, my dancing has mostly consisted of stiff bolted leg to the floor dancing.  But every once in a while I lift my leg in such a way to get in a nice knee stretch: SEXY.  Dancing also hurts in an emotional way because I don't know how to salsa.  I wish I could get some lessons, and salsa seems to be a good way to combine learning Spanish, drinking, and sexuality.  I hope to find a teacher.

The reason I have 8 months off is because I'm taking a bank-leave, which is like a sabbatical, but I saved my overtime up for a paid semester off, so I don't have to do any work while here.  I need to send my lovely union a postcard.  And now school is about to start because my work email is heating up with things that I don't need to read. I feel like such a punk for getting this semester off, but then I realized that this is the first semester I've had off from education since the year before preschool. When I think about it that way, I wonder how to get more semesters off.  I do understand that during my semester off, I'm also enrolled in Spanish classes.  But the trip is becoming joyous because school is about to start, and I'm not there. 

Cafe where I take my classes and sit and read my book