I know that one day I must must die, I'm alive.

Ok, well, the title of this post comes from lyrics of a Brazilian singer called Caetano Veloso. The song is called Nine out of Ten. He has a beautiful voice. It makes me want to melt. Look the song up on youtube.

A lot of times when I am here in this country, I think about those lyrics a lot. How alive I am. how finite time seems and how the end of something is always approaching.

Like my stay here in the beautiful city of Lima. Yes, yes, it is. a few short months and I will be back with all of you lovely folks in the U. S. of A. Best country on the frickin planet. hahaha.

Anyways.

Instead of taking the upper level course of Political Sociology, I decided to take "Sports for Girls" and Film class. The former is a gym class for girls. Yes. segregated by gender. That's how we do here. But it's cool. I can look like andidiot without worrying about boys for two hours of my week. I find here that I am more worried about boys here than I ever have before... but in a way that makes me want to wear a headscarf... or a nun outfit. Or dark brown eyes and shiny black hair.

Anyways, in gym class, pretty much all the girls where spandex pants and tight work-out shirts. Except for the Americans who wear short shorts and baggy t-shirts. hahaha.

Today I went to immigrations because I had to change my visa status. I didnt know what I was getting myself into. Here's how it went:

-Get off the bus, find the street I am looking for. Get to the street and find it filled with people trying to get you to come into one of 50 travel agencies within a 1 block radius to look at their flight offers. Fend off stares and comments from Peruvian boys.

- Get to immigrations. Of course there is no sign telling you where anything is. But the security guard knows that I need to go to floor 3, window 11.

- Get to floor three, window 11. And I think to myself, "Is there a line? What are all these people doing sitting in these chairs?" Decide to just walk up to the window when it may have been my turn.

- The guy behind the glass tells me. "You need to go across the street to a public internet place, and type up, in microsoft word, a statement saying that you can take out money from your bank account and it's enough to last you until the end of your stay. Print it out and sign it. Bring it back... oh yeah, and also, go downstairs and make a payment at the bank on the first floor."

- Go outside, look for an internet place for 5 minutes. Type up something official sounding with bad Spanish grammar.

- Wait in line with the 50 other people waiting to make payments.

- Go upstairs again

- The guy tells me..." uhhh, ok. Now, in two weeks, send an email to this address to see if everything was processed."

And that was it. 1 and 1/2 hours later, I am on my merry way.

I was such a crabby patty afterward. But it was all good in the hood. Then I went to the library to read about how Capitalism and liberal economic policies have been destroying indigenous cultures for centuries. The good news is, now that modernization and progress have arrived to the deepest, most unknown corners of the jungle, we will all be fine.

In other news, I started salsa lessons. Yay.

Also, it's friday tomorrow!