Journaling

I brought a 100 page journal with me to Peru. 100 pages. Guess how long it lasted? 31 days.
I had expected I would need to buy a couple more while I was here, but I did not realize I would need one so soon. I finished y first journal on the 28th of August, but I only had the chance to buy a new one on the 5th of September. This meant for an entire week I was without anything to write in, so I went back to typing everything.
I've sine went through and transcribed everything I typed into my new journal, but it is all still here on my computer. So, I've decided to share a bit of my everyday activity. Hope I'm not to boring. I've added a few notes as well.

Saturday 29 August 2009
I really did not realize I could run out of journal pages so fast. All 100 pages in my first journal are filled. I think theres an average of about 150 words per page, so that is over 15,000 for
Today there was a Rotary meeting at Colegio Santa Rosa at 10. Most the exchangees were there at 10, give or take a couple of minutes. However, the Rotarians decided to hold an hour long meeting before hand for just them. So we all just sat around and talked for an hour. It really is nice talking with the other students. There is so much less pressure when you know they don't know that much more of the language than you do.
The meeting was basically the same as the last one (we had an "Orientation" on the 8th of August). They went through all the rules again. This time, they just stopped and asked us more often if we understood everything. We then had to sign a paper agreeing to the rules. Only after that did we talk about something actually interesting- the trips that are planned. In early November we're going to Cuzco and Puno! Yay!
After lunch, I went with Carlos and Luciana to a soccer gam. Carlos is on a team that is made up of fathers of students at Santa Maria Eufrasia (my high school). The school was really nice. For some reason, there was some sort of mini-zoo in it. I kinda took a whole ton of pictures of some parrots, turtles and rabbits. They were cute.
Luciana's friend Ariana also came to the soccer game along with her mum and little brother. While Luciana played with her classmate, I talked with her mom. She (Sylvia) was very nice. I was the first exchange student she ever meet! She kept saying that she'd like to see Wisconsin. She said she had a friend who went there. It was really nice to talk to her and I understood almost everything she said. She also said that I had pretty good Spanish. Compliments like that make me really happy. I need to remember to email Senora Wagner sometime soon!

Thursday 3 September, 2009
Nobody bothered to wake me up this morning, and for a bit I hoped that we were just not going to school. Unfortunately, we did, just super late, which is not at all unusual for us. I understood most of what happened in Verbal Reasoning, because I thought it was homework already assigned, so I had read it through half a dozen times. Biology was just a practice for the song contest tomorrow. We went down to the theater and practiced and everything. Now I can't get the darn song (Yo te Voy Amar by N'sync) out of my head. We got to leave early today, at 1:00 because we had the Quinaria (Rosary) tonight. My host mom came and picked me up, and we jumped on Pepa's & Lila's mobilidad to get home. When we got home at about 1:30, we ate and then just sat around in the kitchen talking until Daniela and Luciana got home at 4:00. We talked about our mutual love of desserts and chocolate and looked at a bunch of recipes. I think I'm going to make Pizza tomorrow and that we're going to make some kind of dessert every Friday. Sounds yummy to me!
The Quinaria was not what I expected it to be. First off, it was not actually mandatory like I thought; only about 75% of the class showed up. We did the whole enter the church in two line, bow and donate some food that we practiced before. Then we (or at least I, others got up and recited somethings) sat and listened to them say the lords prayer at least a dozen times.

Friday 4 September, 2009
I've come to the realization that Fridays at my school are pointless. We did make it on time to school for the first time this semester! That was exciting. Formacion ran long for some reason (we had to sing a lot of songs to practice for next week?). So, we returned to the class late and Boris was already there. We just told him to leave because we had to work on Junior Achievement. So that's what we did for the first 4 class hours of school. (My classmates had a Junior Achievement class where they had to create a business. My class made purses our of jean material and cool little metal stars.) They're going to a University to sell them tomorrow and Sunday.
Then at 11 was the song competition. (Part of this 2 week long ceremony our school holds to worship the Virgin Mary when she was a baby. I still don't understand why her babiness is such a big deal, but whatever.) We won 2nd place after 3rd grade (of secondary school), Daniela's (my host sister) class. I really had no idea how we did because I was stuck in the middle of the back row holding a giant poster board of Nina Maria with Andrea and Lucia (the other 2 tall people in my class. I'm only taller than them by like 2 inches:). After the competition, everyone in my class was leaving to go set up their stand at the University. But nobody told me. Luckily, my host mom was at the school, so I got to go home early and sleep.
I had my first adventure making pizza today. It went better than I thought it would. I had no idea how hot the water for the yeast mixture was, but it was alright. The dough didn't raise too much, but it still made one good sized crust. Unfortunately, by the time it was ready none of us were really hungry. It was good anyways. My host sisters and I watched Twilight. I have to say, I like the movie better in Spanish.