oh internet café how i love thee
so i had an eventful morning. i dont know where i left off but yesterday was a bummer and it rained a whole bunch and nothing really went on. catie, freddy(the guy who knows how to make it) and i decided on 8am this morning to make pan de coca, because while most people in peru have ovens, they use them for storage and just use the stove top part. big bakeries charge just a little ammount to bake a cake in, and so we were going to have to get there early this morning, because the fire dies out as the day goes on. i felt bad for missing work this morning but when was i going to have a chance to make coca bread again? so i left the house and went and met up with catie. we waited for about a half hour til freddy got there. freddy reminds me of zach. so many of my friends seem to have peruvian counterparts its muy loco. so freddy is taller than me, usually has his plain green backpack with a lotus flower patch on it on him, a sweater, some jeans, etc. he wears sharp glasses and his curly shoulder length hair is in a ponytail. hes studying journalism and very intellectul. i should prolly do a profile on all the cool people i am meeting here, but that would take ages! so the three of us go through the market, gather the ingredients to make a cake frm scratch, and then head to the panaria. on the way i learned that he has coca powder, we werent going to be using actual leaves. he gets it from the jungle where they make it into a powder for him. only 5 soles for 8 cakes worth of coca powder. anyway, i can prolly buy some of him and make more, even more if i can get it home. so then i realized it was like baking a regular cake and adding the powder. but still pretty interesting. we get to the panaria and wait and wait and then the little old lady finally comes to the door. we go inside this huge furnace looking room where there are rows and rows of small cookies. i've seen the cookies being sold on the streets before by the countrywomen, but i never knew where they came from. the lady tells us sadly that the man who comes in the morning and lights the fire for the huge oven didnt come today, and there's nothing we can do. so we are like fuck! cause it was the very last step and it failed. so freddy and catie are going back tomorrow, but i dont want to miss another day of work. if i buy the powder off him i can just make it myself anyhow. then we go to the park, smoke a joint in mourning the loss of our cake adventure, and chill. catie decides to go home and freddy and i return to the marcado to look around. we end up getting fruit drinks like smoothies and talking about music and stuff. we decide to leave and catch a mototaxi. freddy asked me if i wanted to come over and listen to music and i said sure. we get to his house and i realize he is just like a regualr college student. his place is one room and it has a bed and a desk and some other miscellaneous stuff and i liked it a lot. he said it was really cheap and i bet it is! he is a type of artesano too, and he works with silver, like sodering it and stuff. i really liked his desk with all his little tools and shit. we (try very hard) to talk about things but a lot of ideas are hard to get across. i look at his bookshelf and he has books on natural medicine, peyote, etc. he also has books from collections of silver-workers stuff. its pretty neat. we listen to some punkisah music from france and then some cool andean stuff. long story short a really cool time ended with him trying to kiss me and me being like this is cool and all, but i really need to go home now. thankfully it wasnt very awkward (even though the whole situation is already a little awkward seeing as how we can barely communicate!) on the walk to my house, etc. i would prolly say something like 'why the fuck does this always have to happen to some degree'...but i dont even have to. i already know. its just one of those stupid facts of life and unless i am extremely rude here or something, everyone thinks i want them. its weird saying i am ready to come home, because i really dont want to leave ayacucho. i love this city so much, it really has everything, and if i was fluent in spanish maybe i would live here (really really cheaply!!) and go to school and work etc but thats not the life i have. my life is in the states right now. so yeah. i am just ready for the little things like being able to fully comprehend all my friends and have long conversations and make a joke or something. part of my personality is still behind the language barrier, and it is stressful. but in other news, i am going to go lay down and then there is a person coming to speak to us about natural medicine today and then later maybe i'll go to the market. i feel kinda shitty that i am not getting more things for people but then again, who really needs something from peru anyway? i dont even.