Halloween!!!!!!

If you go to Google today, you will see a witch looking at a book. If you play the game, you will notice that she is putting skulls, bones, and other interesting things into a cauldron and mixing it. What's up with Google?

Have you noticed yet? It's...

 Halloween!!

Some people on my online school have been asking me constantly what I'm going to be for Halloween. Here it is to all of you.

This is something my mom wanted my whole post to be:
For Halloween, I'm going to be an American girl in Peru.

Now you know what's up with Google, but what's up with me?

In Peru, all I've seen for Halloween is a few teenagers in the mall in Cajamarca passing out flyers for a haunted house. And a they have a party there. In more Americanized places, a few people celebrate Halloween, but not here in our little town. So for me there's no dressing up or getting candy, so can you save me some?

Peruvians make a bigger deal about the day after Halloween. It's called All Saints Day in English, Fiesta de Todos los Santos (Fi-es-tuh they to-dos los san-tos) in Spanish. Our church is getting together and having a party tomorrow.

Now back to what I'm dressing up for.
I repeat, here they don't dress up, but if I could dress up, (or in other words, next year,) this is what I will be.



Have you ever read Fablehaven? Read it, it's a great series. Anyway, I'm going to be either a monster from Fablehaven, but if that costume is too complicated, then I'll just be a normal character from that awesome series. Like Kendra, the 14-year-old-girl-who-gets-really-annoyed-with-her-brother-named-Seth-who-is-8-and-I'm-going-to-pretend-Renen's-Seth. I'll be only ten, though. I'll just be wearing normal clothes.

And I'm missing that candy, don't eat mine! (In other words, save some candy for me.)

What do you get when you translate "eat" and "May" to Spanish and put them together?

Put this together and what do you got?

You got Cumbe Mayo!

Come means eat, and mayo means May. Change come and put them together, Cumbe Mayo!

Besides Cumbe Mayo, there was another thing I did today...

This is the day I flew.

Also, we passed this Catholic cathedral that's on the main plaza in Cajamarca. We thought these things were made of flower petals, but they were made of painted sawdust. We couldn't look closely at the dove one, because it was behind some gates. But we think it's sawdust.
Firefighter
Dove

We went with a tour guide this time. Guess what? Our tour guide was our Stake President, who was also in our Ward! (A Stake President is something that Mormon churches have, they like lead a group of groups pretty much.)

On the way up the hill, there was a beautiful view. And this proves Renen's point that there are dogs all over.

They even had us stop to look at the view.  So we took a picture. At least Mom uploaded the one with text so I don't have to type it in the following space:____________________________ (look at Lily)

I like this picture kind of better because it shows me, (my necklace,) the hill, and the mountains. I decided to put it in here too.

In the view there was this circle of road. I thought it was interesting. In the picture above, (with the whole family) you can see that it is in the bottom-right corner.

Below you can see the flat land, and then--weird--a hill coming out of nowhere. In the picture with all the view and the family, you can see the hill is at the bottom-left.

This is a tilted picture, sorry if it makes your tummy go whoooooo??:{}{:{:|{>{!?!?!? (yes I am trying to make your stomach go crazy)  but anyway, this is a street that our combis and buses go on all the time. I think it is ridiculously straight. Beside it is a dome building.  It is only half built, and then they ran out of money. I think its kind of funny that there is this big stadium and no one uses it!

 

Below you see the stairs that we have to go down to reach the Cumbe Mayo rocks, and I wanted to take a picture of them. There were a lot.

In Cumbe Mayo, there was a vertical tunnel-ish thing. I wanted to take a picture of it, because it was long, tall, rough, rocky, and pretty much interesting.  

 "The Hicken Nose"

My mom titled this picture the "Hicken Nose". She took this picture because the rock looked like a long, gigantic nose, and Dad's nose (like all the Hickens' noses) was a long, gigantic nose. Not even close to the size of the Rock Formation Person Thingy's nose, though. 

There was this cave, you know, thingy thing... and Mom took a picture of us... you know...

Now out of my shy stage. De do da de de da. I'm ready.

There was this awesome but very narrow extremely narrow cave. In one point it was dark extremely dark. Lily got scared extremely scared, so Renen turned on a helpful extremely helpful flashlight. 

I had lots of this following picture style that all looked the same.

Well, here is this picture. This is what most of the Cumbemayo rocks looked like, but being there in person made it a lot cooler, so COME, PEOPLE WHO WON'T LET THEIR TEENAGE KIDS COME! (the person I'm talking about will know it)

Here is another one, maybe cooler, because it has a mini forest still trying to grow.

Do you know what llamas eat? If you have read Secret of the Andes, that book that I suggested in an earlier post, then you will know. It's called ychu (eat-you) grass! Below is me with the ychu grass. We didn't know it was ychu until our tour guide told us! It looks like this section of ground didn't brush his hair! Do you know what the llamas say to this grass? I'll ychu!! Ha ha ha! 

Lily wanted a picture of her flying too, so now you know what I was doing. Balancing on a very hard to balance on rock that was very rough, while putting my arms out and facing away from the camera. Houdini is figured out. 

But I do think it is interesting how the rocks all go into this valley, right? 

Our tour group went along this path, and by now we are behind. We walk as fast as we can while taking in the view and while posing for pictures.

Scientist at work! Time for me to tell you about the game Lily and I were playing. We were scientists, and we had to find out clues in each Saturday adventure to find the treasure before the bad guy can! There are Native Peruvian petroglyphs on this rock, and the most common petroglyphic is a spiral. It means eternal life, or that's what my tour guide tells me.

Two oceans... have you ever seen that movie? I don't even know if it exists. But maybe it does. On our way up, we passed the Continental Divide. I am standing by a stream that is going to the Pacific Ocean, but the water by Dad and Lily is going to the Atlantic. And only 10 feet apart!  The ancient, pre-Incan people who lived here built this aqueduct to bring water into the Cajamarca valley, which is on the other side of the Continental Divide, so from there it goes to the Amazon River and the Atlantic Ocean.

On the top of this bridge, there is the aqueduct that goes to the Atlantic. I think the bridge looks pretty French, correct?

It is interesting that there is this rock bridge over this aqueduct. 

In Peru, people call white people "gringos". Everyone loves them, so all the crazy teenage girls that were in our tour group went CRAZY to have a picture with Dad, and me, and Lily, and Mom, and Renen, and Kai. Do you see what I mean about teenagers being crazy? (With some exceptions, not including my brothers.)

The brave explorer, daring to enter the cave, WILL SHE DO IT? YES SHE WILL! But first she has to twist her ankle. 

This cave is dark.

The rock that is on the bottom had more petroglyphs on it, so they said we couldn't step on it while we were trying to get a picture inside the cave.

Oh, you didn't notice the lake before? No, first I just inserted an upside-down picture, and put a rightside-up picture on top of it. 

See, I did enter the cave. Can you find Lily? Dad took the picture. But look at that rock over Kai's head. It looks like it's about to fall. It didn't, gratefully. 

More petroglyphs. I thought I'd put this in there so you could observe the letters more carefully.

Look at this picture! Our tour guide said that it was a lion and a panther fighting or something, two big cats fighting, but I don't get the picture.

We were trying to see who was taller: Renen, or Mom, with the background of part of Cumbe Mayo. When Mom looked at this picture, she said "Uh!" 

I said "What?" 

"Renen's taller than me!"

Afterwards, we went to this one fancy mall in Cajamarca with a shop called El, which means Him. It is the only store that sells men's suits already made! Also, it can fit you if you want. Lily made friends with this mannequin. I guess she asked Kai to take pictures of her with him.

"Are you taking the picture yet?"

"Oh, we're stylish, baby."

Oh, well that's my trip to Cumbe Mayo, and hope you make friends with a mannequin soon!

Germs Schmerms!

       As you know, germs are all over. But, if you are a American moving to Peru, germs are everywhere! Germs cause most of my longing for home. For example: (Table of contents:)

1) We can't walk on floors with out carpet, unless we are wearing shoes.

2) We can't drink the tap water. (normal water from the faucet)

3) We can't eat meat off the streets.

4) We have unusually unlikeable swim practices.

#1: We can't walk on floors without carpet, unless we are wearing shoes.

       Yeah... that's right. My mom and dad say that you can get germs by walking on the floor with bare feet. My siblings and I believe them. (I'm not sure about my big brothers, maybe they are just doing it not to get tortured by Mom and Dad.) At least I brought lots of shoes!

#2: We can't drink tap water. 

      Not here in Peru. We can't drink it because there is bacteria in the water that is not good. Even Peruvians can get sick. But because that germs are already all over, we don't want to take chances. We drink purified water. At least they sell purified water. One company is Cielo, which means sky/heaven, and the other is San Luis. San Luis is by CocaCola. I like it better, not because it tastes good, (both brands taste bad) but because they can deliver 20 gallon cartons to your house! I still like drinking tap water at home better.

#3: We can't eat meat off the streets.

      Not literally the streets, but there are usually stands by the street that sell meat. Renen, my brother, is really hungry after swim team so he always wants one. But my mom says that it is unsanitary, since it is on the streets. It could be pecked at by flies, or something. And I hate the SMOKE! I wouldn't eat it anyway, most of it is just chicken hearts or something. 

#4: We have unusually unlikeable swim practices.

      Well, not likeable here. It is usually fun at home, but not here. That's because they don't put chlorine in the pool. And they only put river water in the pool! (It does come from hot springs. That's why it is warm. The only way it is cool: it is heated by a volcano!) On our first day of swim team, Tuesday, it is pretty clean, not all the way. A few hairs, but no more. Next day, Wednesday, it is noticeably dirty. Thursday, they are emptying the pool. Since you are closer to the bottom, and since more people have visited the pool since yesterday, it seems much dirtier with clumps of ewcky stuff on the bottom of the pool. That makes a bad end-of-the-day (since swim team is at 5:00 to 6:30).

So, be glad that you can WALK on the FLOOR, DRINK from the FAUCET, HAVE SNACKS from NORMAL COMMERCE CENTERS, and have a LIKEABLE POOL.

Ventanillas de Otuzco

 Ventanillas de Otuzco means Windows of Otuzco. The Ventanillas de Otuzco is a place where people before the Incas, a long time ago, buried their dead. We know this because in the "windows", bones were found. The mountain was created by a volcano eruption, and the volcano is not active now. I got really scared about that. Around the Ventanillas de Otuzco are some cactuses, and since we are briefly studying cactuses in school, I thought I might take some pictures of those. I am using headlines, so just in case you don't want to see the cactus pictures, you can see the Ventanillas pictures, or, if you don't want to see the Ventanillas pictures, you can still see the cactus pictures.

Ventanillas de Otuzco

My family and me...wonder how I climbed that rock? There were lots of foot holds and ledges on the back. Also, my arms were strong enough to pull me up. And, Kai moved. Besides that, I have no idea how I got up there.

More of my family...

More family... (look at Lily. Lily is my little sister. Pose for the picture!)

I might have already gotten this one...

More windows... (my online school is having an art contest that I might enter, but I can't think of anything that can go with the theme: windows into our world. Maybe I can submit one of these pictures).

More windows... (I'm getting bored of windows, let's get a door!)

As you can see, some of the "windows" are deep, and some are not. Some don't seem like windows at all, they are so shallow. But some seem like a tree could grow from the bottom up, (if it had the right living conditions, which it doesn't. No light, soil, water, just rock.) and be twenty feet tall without seeing light.

Like this one, it's pretty deep. I had to zoom in a lot to get this picture.

 

Hey look! No more window pictures! Now it's time for...

Cactus pictures! (You're going to get bored of these too.)

Look at the inside of the cactus, I think it's kind of interesting. (Sorry, the camera didn't focus.)

Poky cactus...ow!

Pretty cactus flower.

Now we're done with those too. Up to...

Views!  

Can you see that crater, where they're probably mining? I found out that they mine gold, silver, copper, and other minerals near Cajamarca. I'll let you look at the view now.

Only one of those. Now time for...

Other! (Oh, so exciting, I get to look at the pictures categorized as other!!!)

We found this ditch, which they probably dug for water, cause it rains a lot here. It's above the Ventanillas, so it's probably so the Ventanillas don't get the effect of the erosion.

 There was this flower, I thought I'd put it on here because it looks like it's kissing you.

 This is the pathway you walk down to get away from the Ventanillas, and I thought it was pretty green.

There was this thing we wanted to take a picture of. Left to right: First, two windows so apart from the other ones, then, a few interesting trees, then, a low-quality house with a wall and a roof missing and plants growing on the top. It was really interesting,

 Now time for shopping!

We went souvenir shopping after our trip. There was this statue that looked really tall and really strained outside a tourist shop, so we took this picture with me and my big brother Kai.
This is the Inca king Atahualpa, and if you don't remember him, you can see my post The Ransom Room.

I bought a book holder. It was a right angled piece of stone. On the back, there was a picture of the Ventanillas de Otuzco, with the words across the top, and on the sides of the bottom there were tiny steps. There was a shallow pit for putting an eraser. Beside that, there were four pencil holders, two on each side! One of my goals of things to buy has been school supplies, another one has been souvenirs, and it was only siete soles! (seven suns, which is what they call their money.) Here, though, they bargain a lot, so I got it for six soles instead. What a good purchase!

There was also this hanging bridge. It was pretty cool, and really long. I loved it. For a connection, read the Geronimo Stilton series, I can't remember which book.

At the restaurant that we went to afterwards, (where the food was really good) there was a mini playground. One of the things there was see-saws. You can see more by the movie. 

(The movie is 11:15, so you might want to move your mouse every once and a while so your computer doesn't turn off. It turned off while I was making sure the movie was good.)