Pisco sour, Pisco puro

First of all the internet cafe is playing remixd Venga boys and that song "y'all ready for this?", you know, from Jock Jams, and it's pretty friggin awesome. If you've never heard of the VEnga boys you are seriously, seriously missing out on a staple of crappy pop-electronica club music. The Boys are currently featured on my myspace.com page, or if you don't have myspace you can probably listen to a sample on amazon.com by searching Venga Boys. And i know it's your number one priority. Y'all ready for this? Formulaic techno voiced over by pre-pubescants? It's great because it was honstly a huge club hit. Anything with a beat I guess. Anyways, Pisco is the national drink of Peru. Apparently something like the Spanish king didn't want SA wine over-running España, so he decided to place a large tarriff on it. Landholders responded by creating a fermented version of grape-water that is not technically wine. Pisco sour is the most popular version (at least for tourists), which is the only way i've had it so far. It's sour. But it's pretty damn sweet too, thus the title of this entry.
My mood picked up remarkably once i got out of Lima. The bigger the city the more time you spend finding your way, getting hasseled by touts and paying a lot of money for stuff (see my entries on Bangkok and Mumbai, which don't actually exist. And I've never been to Mumbai. But I hear it's real expensive. I also hear that busloads of people from Mumbai come to Goa on the weekends to see Western women sunbath toplss. Again, I've never ben, but I believe it based on how I saw Indian men act towards Western women in India. The attitude seems to be "I know this blonde from baywatch wants to have sex with me, i'm just not sure how to make it happn... mayb if i just pull out my penis... Goa is Catholic, thanks to the Portuguise, who launchd their own inquisition to outdo the one in Spain. The man in charge was later named a saint and is venerated in Goa... I guess it's a "whoever tortures the most people wins" system, kind of lik what we have going in the US! Habeus shmabeus. That was a communist plot anyways. And if we don't let P. Daddy Bush interpret the Gnva convntions, the trrorists have won, right? Can I get an Amen!.
I'm in a little town called Pisco (suprise!) that has the most pleasant little public square i've ever seen. I credit classic Spanish town planning, which always has a central common area surounded by gridded streets for easy navigation; it can be distinguishd by classic French layouts because the French preferred large boulevards radiating diagnally from the corners of the town square (hopefully that gives you a visualization?). They both can be distinguished by typical American planning by the latter's lack of any cohesive structure or logic; plus traditionally American planning relies more heavily on strip malls and over-sized parking lots. It's not intended for "beauty" as much as "convincing people to spend their paychecks on chinsy crap from China," as witnessd by 3/4 of US GDP being represented by consumer spending and China being the largest holder of US dollars in the world. But I digress. The central plaza is great because it has well maintained grounds (unlike most of the sidewalks, evidence of its importance to the daily lives of Piscans - actually it appears that sidewalks are maintaind by the owner of the building next to them, not the city, so maybe I'm wrong), many large trees full of several kinds of chirping birds, and is obviously a meeting ground for after school, during siesta (banks, for example, close for 2-3 hours during the middle of the day), or for old men to hang around and trade old man bullshitting (which sems to be a worldwide phenomenon).
If you ever come to Peru and wonder why seats on the top of the bus are 2/3 the price of the bottom of the bus, it's because the bathroom on the top is "for urinary only", and top customers can't go downstairs to use the bathroom. So don't make the same mistake I did and drink a bunch of pisco, eat sushi from a sidewalk vendor and then show up at the bus station all sick just to find out why you "saved" 20 soles on your ticket (OK, just kidding about the shushi. I was just trying to think of the stupidest thing I could think of to eat your first day in a foreign country. And there is a lot of Japanese in Peru; i haven't figured out why yet but I plan to. They have a Japanese ex-president though, Fujimoro I think. He tamed the massive inflation Peru was suffring in the early 90's (I think early 90's) but was heavilly criticized by human rights groups for allowing too many bad apples (I prefer to call them "misguided apples") and naughty paramilitaries in his regime. Currently exiled on a remote Japanese island and trying to figure out how he can circumvent the Peruvian constitution and courts and get back in the country to run for president again. Kind of a Clinton approach to politics I guess: the law is like a piñada - the more you beat it, the more candy comes out.
Tomorrow I'm going to see the islas ballestas, seabirds and sea lions, penguins and dolphins. So I'll let y'all know how that goes. As you can tell, I've gotten pretty good at mastring the tiny shift keys on the keyboard and the ' being whre the - usually is (I had to ask how to get a - actually I can't get it to go again, the little "at" thingy in an email address. It involves holding control and tapping the 4 and 6 on the number pad several times). Anyways, I've got that under control but not the sticky e on this particular keyboard. So that's good. And I already speak more spanish than I did after 4 months in Thailand, so that's good too. That's really one of the coolest things about travelling outside your country - the satisfaction of saying "I'd like to go to Arequipa" and having a prson understand you! And serious, that sentence involves two verbs, which means one is conjugated and one isn't, which is no big deal for first year spanish students, but i haven't been one of those for like 5 years (my first and ONLY year of spanish, the hardest class I ever took in college). So I like that too. Let's see, what else... I'd like to get a suitcase handcuffed to my arm, that would b cool. I wrote a letter to my Dad that started "I'm not", but I meant to write "I'm nearly", but I still wanted to use it, so I wrote "I'm not a steam-boat operator, Dad. Don't even pretend like I operate steamboats. Thre's a lot you don't know about me. Sorry this letter had to take such a harsh turn at the beginning". I think a dance party is breaking out in the internet cafe. Gotta go! Look forward to HEARING FROM SOME OF YOU (not that it's lonely travelling by yourself in a place where you communicate at a 3 year old level, and not that I want the ego-boost of finding out I'm not the only one that likes reading what I write). Isn't that what's supposed to be cool about blogs, you can like post rsponses and stuff on them? I dunno, I don't really read blogs. Oh, one more thing, I think there's a spell-check on the Blog program, but all the buttons are in Spanish so I can't find it and I'm scared of pushing "delete your work and start over" or something, so sorry about the occasional error. Maybe if any teachrs are reading they can be wracked with guilt (or if anyone who uses Blogspot is reading describe to me whre the spell check button is?) You know in China poor student performance is seen as a result of bad teaching, not lazy students... man, like every teacher in the whole US would be terrible. Rachl Lee, you've been to China, do they scare the crap out of those kids or something? Cause there would have to be at least one student in a class that doesn't like school... ok, I'm tangenting again. Take care northside.