Warfare and birthdays

So, the soccer game. It was pretty exciting, even though Cienciano lost to Toluca in the last five minutes. The crowd is unbelievable. It´s always fun to hear people scream insults at the opposing team at any sporting event, but it´s even more fun to hear people screaming insults in a language that´s not your own. You don´t have the same emotional associations with the words and everything sounds like a joke. There´s also one section in the stadium where all the students sit, and there was not one moment during the entire game when they weren´t chanting, stomping, throwing streamers onto the field, and/or lighting matches and/or firecrackers. In addition, that section of the crowd had a gigantic flag that they spread out every so often to cover about half of them, which urged the rest of the audience to vote for Machu Picchu for one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Additionally, there wer a ton of police guards that had to form a barricade for the other team whenever they entered or left the field. There were moments when I had to remind myself that I was in fact at a soccer game and not in the middle of guerrilla warfare.

Speaking of guerrilla warfare, I am currently in the middle of an ongoing water war with Mikhel. Since Carnaval water wars are always divided by gender, Rosita is on my team by default, but somehow Mikhel is still winning. This morning he foiled my plan to drop water balloons on him from the balcony by running up the stairs with a pitcher of water and dumping it on my before I even realized he was coming. This warfare will continue through tomorrow, which is the last day of Carnaval.

Yesterday was the 89th birthday of the ¨Abuelita¨(grandma) in my house, so the ENTIRE family was here to celebrate. There are a lot of them. And there was a ton of delicious food and cake. I walked in while everyone was eating because an obligatory SIT group activity had run longer than it should have, and as soon as I had gobbled down my plate of food Socorro pulled me aside to ask me if I knew how to play ¨Happy Birthday¨on guitar. I said no, but if she gave me about five minutes I could probably figure out the cords. I ran upstairs to my room to get my guitar, and had just finished tuning it when Socorro came up and said, ¨OK, ready? Do you know how to play it?¨I frantically scrambled to find the right cords but could not in my panic. ¨OK, just play anything!¨she said. On my way down the stairs I figured out a couple cords and just played really softly and badly while everyone was singing happy birthday. I don´t think Abuelita even noticed because she´s pretty hard of hearing. That´s probably a good thing.