1. Every
5 minutes you are kissing someone you do not know:
Ex.
I am walking with a Peruvian who meets a friend who is passing by on the way to
an appointment. He quickly kisses
my friend and then me (never asking my name) to say hello and within seconds turns
around and kisses my friend and me again as he scurries off. Really, what’s the point.
Ex.
I am with a group of people and another friend comes along. They kiss everyone at the gathering,
including me, without questioning who I am.
Ex.
I go to work in the morning with over 25 teachers. As each person comes in they kiss everyone else. The process takes upwards of 12
minutes. I have to go to work 20
minutes early just so I have time to kiss everyone before class starts! That’s
sick!
Ex.
I meet someone at a discotecha and he leans over to introduce himself and goes
to give me a kiss and last minute swiftly turns his head so I plant one on his
probably not so clean and delicious lips.
2. You and your roommates time a ball
rolling down the living room floor every morning to check for possible mud
slide scenarios
3. Being a Jewish mother from the ‘burbs
doesn’t seem half that bad. I have
to get my hair washed here once a week since the showers are at best luke warm
and the pressure doesn’t allow for my hair to every get completely clean!
4. You have to change the return flight of
your $850 round trip ticket and they charge you $1300 for the change fare!
5. You go to work, come home and sleep for
4 hours then go out at 9:30PM dancing salsa until 2 in the morning. Come back home and sleep another 4
hours and start all over again!
6. You have 2 random people sleeping on
your couch any given night (but I guess that goes for anyone who is traveling
so scratch that)
7. You have to walk 5 blocks out of your
way to get home because the sewers are backlogged from the flooding and whole
rivers magically appeared on your path.
8. Every other man wants something from
you and its not your brains or your personality
9. Everyone keeps asking “Why am I still
here?”
10.
All the restaurants and tiendas close for lunch so the waiters and owners can
have lunch. (ummm.. duh!)
11.
You are walking home from wherever and you hear a man running up the street
past you with a cowbell in his hand.
Then, you too are running up the hill to get into your apartment to
collect the 18 bags of garbage that have been collecting over the past 7
days. Only 20 feet behind this man
is the garbage truck. You never
know when they will come or how long it will take for them to get from the
bottom of the hill to your apartment.
So, you have to make a mad dash to your own bags and hope that you can
get them outside before the truck leaves you in the dust!)
12. You sing with joy as you step out of
the shower and wrap yourself in a huge, beautiful, warm towel that took you 2
months to find. This towel has
literally changed the course of my happiness here in Peru. It is a true Godsend.
13. Every other day another English
co-worker calls in sick to work with stomach issues
14. When your friend ends up in the
hospital with three different types of bacteria and one parasite. And then, a week later she goes back to
the hospital for a check up and the doctor says, “good news, the parasite is
gone. Bad news, now you have another
one.”
15. When the doctors prescribe medicine for
you without asking you your history, your family history or your
allergies. And then, when you
question him he gets angry and tells you that you are difficult to work with
and that you should see another doctor if you cannot trust him (this happened
to the same friend as above!)
16. You know every single person, tourist and not, who go to the discotechs because this place is so small!
