Come Visit Us, We’ll Show You a Good Time!

5/10/10: Arequipa, Peru

Since Kevin’s dad (henceforth referred to as Dad Curry) was nice enough to come down here to meet us, we thought the least we could do would be to show him a good time. So here’s what we did the last two days:

Cooked and ate pasta for lunch
When we go home I may actually never eat spaghetti with canned sauce ever again. It’s cheap, it’s easy it’s filling and you can get it in any country, but really – I’m so over it. But despite my strong feelings about pasta/pasta sauce, what did we decide to do for Dad Curry’s first official meal with us in Peru? Did we take him out to the nicest restaurant in Arequipa? Did we find a place with delicious alpaca filet and kitschy decor and eat there? Nope, we stayed at our hostel and made pasta with pasta sauce.

Went to the Arequipa mall
When we first stepped into the mall here in Arequipa a few days ago, my jaw just dropped. A Radio Shack! Payless Shoes! Burger King! Having grown up in the Mall State (New Jersey), I suffer from mall withdrawal if I don’t get to see one every day. So even though Arequipa’s mall was only about the size of a regular Macy’s back home, we still went there every day just to walk around and feel sophisticated. We would wander around the department store, and I loved staring in awe at the shiny new blenders and mixers. So of course when Dad Curry got here we had to show off our mall to him. We showed him the KFC and the Pizza Hut and pointed out the Radio Shack. (Look, headphones!) I don’t think he was very impressed by our mall, but he was too polite to say anything about it.

Went to the Arequipa bus station
We had actually attempted to buy tickets the day before Dad Curry got here so that we wouldn’t have to make him go to the bus station with us, and it’s a boring story about what happened with that, but basically, we failed. So yesterday the three of us took a taxi to the Arequipa bus station to get our tickets to Cabanaconde. I always get nervous at bus stations because we’ve heard so many stories of people who have gotten bags or wallets stolen at bus stations. And in this case, I was particularly nervous about going to the Arequipa bus station because a) with three people and my overactive imagination, we had triple the chance of losing something and b) the Arequipa bus station is supposedly one of the worst bus stations in Peru for getting your bag taken or getting pickpocketed. But it turned out that we successfully and safely bought our bus tickets, and I didn’t panic once. Not even silently. I consider that a resounding success.

Had yet another crappy crappy bus ride
I could write a book about the crappy bus rides we’ve had in the last eight months, but I won’t do it, because a) it would be really boring and b) all the stories would be the same. (But she’s still going to talk about the crappy bus ride, isn’t she? Yes, she is!) In all honesty, I can’t think of a worse bus ride we’ve had during the day. It was blazing hot and our windows didn’t open. At points it was so crowded that there were people sitting on our armrests and I literally could not see Dad Curry across the aisle from us. The road was bumpy and dusty and our driver seemed hell bent on killing us. And to top it all off, they played music (in Spanish) so loudly I couldn’t hear myself think. At one point on the ride I was literally banging my head against the seat in front of me out of frustration. When I finished doing that I looked over at Dad Curry to see how hew as handling it. The first adjective that came to my mind: stoic.

So in short – here’s what what we did with Dad Curry in his first few days in Peru: we made him spend a night alone in the Lima airport, we cooked him mediocre pasta, we took him to the Arequipa mall, we made him go with us to an unsafe and crowded bus station, and for the grand finale we got on a hot, crowded, bumpy, and extremely loud five-hour bus ride.

Makes you want to come see us too, doesn’t it?
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Extremely NOT thrilled with this bus ride.

Read Full Post »

Hurry, Curry and Come Visit Peru!

5/9/10: Arequipa, Peru

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a survey. How many of you readers are married? [Tabulating results...] Wow, only 200,000 of you? That means that over 80% of our audience is young, hip kids. Ok, out of the married folks, how many have taken a honeymoon? [Tabulating results...] 180,181 – that’s odd. Literally. Who went without their spouse? Ok, final question – how many of you invited your dad on you honeymoon? [Tabulating results...] No one? Well, I suppose someone has to start that trend, so it might as well be us.

That's Dad! With the arrow pointing at him! (I drew the circle and arrow myself.)

First, I’ll admit that our honeymoon is not really all that typical. So perhaps having family visit is not completely weird. It’s not like Zhou and I couldn’t deal with each other for a full honeymoon so we had to call in backups so there wasn’t so much one-on-one time. That probably wouldn’t bode well for the marriage.

With all that being said, watching Dad walk off the plane to join us was definitely one of the best experiences of our honeymoon. To quell our anticipation a bit (you know, in case Dad wasn’t as cool as we remembered, we didn’t want to get our hopes too high), we made a bet on how many people would walk off the plane ahead of him. Zhou took under 23.5, while I took the over. My theory: locals here in South America love to get out of vehicles more than anywhere else in the world. In the States a ridiculously long line always forms ten or more minutes before the plane is ready to board. In South America the same phenomenon happens, only upon arrival. Zhou and I always seem to be the last to disembark, no matter how close to the front we sit or how ready we are to leave. So yeah, I took the over. And Dad was the 29th person off.

Zhou and I were the only two waiting on an arriving passengers. The other 100 people were waiting in a different, better spot.

A good view of Dad sticking out amongst the locals.

It’s amazing to me how much our lives have changed since the last time we saw him on September 6th (that’s 245 days ago). It was the day after our wedding, and I vividly remember waving goodbye to my family in the parking lot of the hotel. On that day I had never been outside North America. I hadn’t figured out that it was ok to call Zhou my wife. I had never eaten a bite of watermelon. I had never showered with geckos, slept near elephants, done a multi-day hike, fallen into a canyon, jumped out of a plane, been inside a temple, surfed, walked on a glacier, been featured on The Amazing Race, driven a car on the left side of the road (legally), done an overnight in an airport, visited my other homeland (China), etc.

I know I’ve written this before, but the only constant in life is family, and for the past eight months I was only able to talk to them on Skype. I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to see Dad in person, and see that even though a lot has changed, nothing has changed. We may be in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home, but he’s still Dad. And now that he’s here, two new countdowns for the Curry family begin:

5 days until Steve arrives!
54 days until we see Mom!

But in the meantime, we'll enjoy every second with Dad.

_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: A new species of bird for Dad to enjoy: pigeons.

Read Full Post »

Guess Who?

5/8/10: Arequipa, Peru

I love Arequipa. I know Kevin already wrote about this with his post a couple of days ago, but I think it’s worth repeating. I love Arequipa.

For a place that's known as “The White City,” Arequipa is pretty colorful.

Here’s what we did today: walked to the ATM, ate some lunch (Peruvian Chinese), got some soft serve at the food court in the mall, walked around downtown, tried to buy some bus tickets but failed, mailed a batch of postcards, went to the grocery store and bought some groceries, went back to the hostel, played three games of pool (Kevin won), cooked and ate dinner, watched Get Smart. Not that interesting, right?

So let’s play a game. Below are some pictures we took from today. Below each picture are two captions – one written by myself and one written by Kevin. See if you can guess who wrote which caption. If you get them all right, give yourself a pat on the back. From me. Ready?

Picture 1:
Zhou is hiding behind this fire hydrant.
Fire hydrant for daschunds.

Picture 2:
A not-so-scary scarecrow.
Check out the smurf in the sunglasses in the background.

Picture 3:

For mature audiences only.
I never would have taken such an inappropriate picture.

Picture 4:
I had to get on Kevin’s shoulders for this shot.
Remnants from the Cool Runnings bar fight.

Picture 5:
“I didn’t just eat your candy bar!”
Quite possibly the cutest dog in all of Arequipa.

Picture 6:
Go Cavs!
It’s a long, cold walk to the end.

Picture 7:
I’d like to have a wooden cowboy guard my church.
Whoever built these bars didn’t realize they were trying to contain midget cowboys.

Picture 8:
Spying on a couple’s tender moments.
Spying on someone else’s tender moment.

Picture 9:
An illiterate photographer took this picture.
Doesn’t the ugly lamppost in the back kill the ambiance of the nice decorative ones?

Answers:
Picture 1: K, Z
Picture 2: Z, K
Picture 3: Z, K
Picture 4: Z, K
Picture 5: K, Z
Picture 6: K, Z
Picture 7: Z, K
Picture 8: K, Z
Picture 9: Z, K

Note: The reason that number nine has two very similar captions is not because Kevin and I think alike. It’s because when I took the picture, I told Kevin what I was going to caption it (this is before I thought of this game to replace making the effort of writing an actual post), and he almost remembered it.
_____________________________________________

Puzzles for Postcards

Where Am I? Name the city.

_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Hmmm. Something’s funny about this picture.

Read Full Post »

A List of My Ineptitudes

5/7/10: Arequipa, Peru

Ineptitude 1: Booking Our Tickets Home

I suppose you could put this down to bad luck, an extension of our cama-bus-curse perhaps, but whatever it was, bad luck or just bad service, the bottom line is this: over the last three days, I have spent 390 minutes and three seconds on Skype attempting to call Asia Miles to book our tickets home using our frequent flier miles. And this was over – are you ready for this? – 69 calls. I would call this absurd, but the line between absurdity and whatever lies beyond that was crossed about 50 calls before.

Here’s a rough idea of what happened on these 69 calls:
40 calls – dialed the number on Skype only to be met by a busy signal. That’s right, you read correctly, a busy signal. When was the last time you called someone and got a busy signal? Who doesn’t have call waiting these days? Oh wait, Asia Miles, that’s who!
4 calls – were met by a recorded voice informing us that their lines are extremely busy, and can we please leave a message and they’ll call us back. Riiiiiight. You’ll call us back. And I’ll see sugar packets not arranged by color and just leave them alone. I don’t think so.
7 – were told that we inputted an incorrect Asia Miles frequent flier number and to please hang up and try again. My fingers did NOT input the incorrect numbers – I took piano lessons from age five to age fifteen, thank you.
12 – successfully navigated the pressing-buttons-system and got put on hold anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes only to have the call drop before it was even answered.
3 – successfully got put on hold anywhere from 5 to 50 minutes (yes, really, 50 minutes) and briefly reached a live person who couldn’t hear us and hung up .5 seconds after saying, “Hello?” and not getting an answer.
1 – spoke to a person who told us there were no flights available to Columbus on July 1st or July 2nd. Asked her to check late June. Got put on hold. Got dropped. Or maybe got hung up on – it’s impossible to know.
1 – spoke to a person who must have just started on the job about ten minutes before he picked up my call. He tried to book a flight for us to Claremont, because I guess when I said, “London Heathrow to Columbus, CMH” that meant “please look up flights from London to Claremont, which don’t exist and waste ten minutes doing that before figuring out we actually want to fly to Columbus.” Did eventually find a flight – London to JFK, then LaGuardia to CMH and reserved it for us. Asked for a credit card number for the airport taxes and fees. Almost choked when I heard that the airport fees and taxes would come to $140 per ticket. Thought that must have been a mistake and asked him to double check. Got dropped.
1 – Stayed on hold for an hour and forty minutes. Call was answered. Our information had been saved. Didn’t even bat an eyelash at the $140 taxes/fees estimate. Gave them a credit card number and booked the flight.

Ineptitude 2: Taking a Shower

How to unsuccessfully take a shower, step-by-step instructions.

1. Go to bathroom with toiletries.
2. Get undressed.
3. Turn on left handle (red).
4. Stand there with hand under the water for about two minutes.
5. Decide that handle must be mislabeled.
6. Turn off left handle.
7. Turn on right handle (blue).
8. Stand there with hand under the water for about thirty seconds.
9. Realize the water is ice cold and that the original handle must have been the correct handle.
10. Turn off right handle.
11. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
12. Decide that like some other hostels, this one must have a hot water switch somewhere that you didn’t see.
13. Turn off left handle.
14. Look around the bathroom for the hot water switch.
15. Don’t find the hot water switch.
16. Get dressed because your towel is too small to cover all of you and go outside.
17. Walk up and down the hall looking for the hot water switch.
18. Don’t find the hot water switch.
19. Ask the woman at the front desk if the red handle is the hot water (it is).
20. Ask her if there’s a trick to the hot water (there’s not).
21. Go back upstairs to the bathroom.
22. Repeat steps 2 – 10.
23. Get dressed.
24. Go to room and ask husband to help you turn on the hot water.
25. Receive blank stare in return.
26. Curse yourself for being so stupid that you can’t even work the hot water.
27. Retrieve toiletries from bathroom.
28. Go to sleep dirty.

Ineptitude 3: Cooking Dinner

We decided that we would cook dinner today to save ourselves the long walk all the way to town and the fare for a cab ride back. With this in mind, we bought ingredients for our second-simplest meal: sausages with onion and green pepper. I had already chopped up the onions and green peppers, which Kevin was cooking on the stove. I commenced chopping up a tomato (which we had bought for spaghetti sauce for making spaghetti, which is, not coincidentally, our first-simplest meal). I ate a slice of the tomato I was chopping because I was hungry. Something was terribly wrong.

Z: This is the spiciest tomato I’ve ever eaten!
K: …
Z: Wait a second – tomatoes aren’t spicy… and these peppers aren’t green peppers! It did seem weird that they had black seeds…

Kevin was aghast. Unfortunately we had already put quite a generous amount of the (not green) peppers into the skillet, and they had been cooking with the onions for the last 10 minutes. Kevin tasted one of the (not green) peppers and then frantically started picking all of them out of the skillet with a fork and throwing them into the trash. Luckily it turns out our meal wasn’t ruined – the (not green) peppers actually added a nice little kick to the sausages and onions.

Now if only I could get the hot water working…
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: The fancy flowers in our fancy Arequipa neighborhood.

Read Full Post »

Arequipa is a Keepa’ (That’s Slang for Keeper)

5/6/10: Arequipa, Peru

South America is our favorite continent. We held a meeting over dinner a few days ago and we made it official. (For those who are curious, Africa came in close second, then Australia then Asia. We loved Asia, don’t get me wrong, but somewhere had to be last.)

Arequipa is our favorite city in South America. We held a meeting over dinner today and we made it official. (We hold a lot of meetings – I guess it makes us feel like we have responsibilities. Some other meeting topics: M&M colors from best to worst, the advantages of two-ply over three-ply, why I will win the bottled water bet, how long it will take before I stop constantly playing with my ring.) By transitivity one would think that Arequipa is therefore our favorite city in the world. One would be wrong.

But this isn’t a blog post about what’s wrong with Arequipa. Nor is it about what’s wrong with the idea that Jermaine O’Neal has made $22,999,984 more than Zhou and I since September. Instead this will be about how it took us only three hours to proclaim Arequipa as our favorite city on our favorite continent.

First, there’s the colors. Arequipa is known as “the white city,” or so we’ve heard, but the neighborhoods here are so colorful. This is actually quite common through South America, and it has made us wonder why there isn’t more color in the States. It’s so bad back home that a suburb near mine in Columbus was built entirely using red brick and white picket fences. Zhou and I have decided that when we invent our our real-life neighborhood, it will be more colorful than anything America has ever seen.

Then, there is the history. We’re normally not big fans of history (I only stayed awake through about three days of Modern European during high school), but here it is quite cool to see all the old architecture mixed with all the new colors. It’s like combining the ancient royal look of White Castle with the fresh spin of Harold and Kumar. That makes sense, right?

Our hostel has something to do with it also. We’re staying at a place called Arequipay Backpackers, which is located in a gated-community in the richer part of town. It’s got an amazing movie room, the best ping-pong table we’ve seen and even a indoor wall of rock and ivy which water sometimes falls over to give this place a feel more like the Venetian in Vegas. We were saying how when Dad arrives he’s going to think we’ve been living the high life for the past eight months.

Finally, if all the stuff in the city isn’t cool enough, there’s an impressive volcano looming over the horizon, ready to blow at any time. (Ok, I made that last clause up.) If we had taken any pictures today this would have been an awesome, colorful post that would make you wish you were here. Instead, you get my rambling text that doesn’t do the city any justice, just the way David didn’t do any justice to Halle.

The point is, Arequipa is great. I need to get off the computer and go enjoy it.
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: As Zhou would say, cacti make every city look like Arizona!

Read Full Post »