Something I never thought I would ask: So what do the nuns you work with think of your nipple piercing?

Setting: So I am walking with a German, a Peruvian, and American down the street. Yentz (the German…duh) knows just a little bit of both English and Spanish. He volunteers at a clinic my American friend works with.

So Yentz notices three tattoo and piercing parlors across the street. He stops us, turns to us and starts trying to communicate something to us in Spanglish. None of us understand. So, in the middle of the street, he pulls up his shirt, baring his chest. After a moment of wincing, shock, and awkward conversation, we figure out a ball from his nipple piercing has been lost and he is in need of a replacement.

So we go into one tattoo parlor. Yentz isn’t sure how to say what he wants. So he just walks up to the counter and whips up his shirt in the middle of the store. We will soon find the store doesn’t have what he is looking for, however, in Peru when there is a shop specializing in something in one location, shops specializing in the same thing pop up right next door (reason: a cultural connection between shopping and relationships). Anyway, for this reason, we all become acquainted with every tattoo and piercing parlor in the district and every tattoo and piercing parlor in the district becomes acquainted with Yentz’ chest.

He never did find what he was looking for though we each got a free tattoo parlor sticker out of the experience. That was nice. As my American friend said when we laughed over it afterward, “When you live overseas you get to the point where surprises are not so surprising anymore.”

Dude 2

How to enjoy surfing in Lima:

1. Go on a 2 hour bike ride down the beach with two biking friends
   
2. Stop and relax sometime in the middle of the bike ride, sitting and watching the ocean
3. Watch your friend greet a surfing instructor she knows who happens to walk by
4. Get offered surfing discounts ($6 for renting everything you need for however long you want it!)
5. Surf the next day
6. After a long struggle of getting on a wetsuit for the first time, enjoy the fact that you look like a tough ninja
7. Learn what to do and stretch

8. Get your board and enjoy the fact that you look like a surfer even though you have not touched a wave yet. Throw around some stereotypical “Dude” and “Whoooaaa” phrases in each one of your sentences until your friends give you I-really-wish-I-could-hurt-you glances9. Move out to the waves
10. Catch some waves with the help of an instructor who appears to be one of Jar Jar Binks’ distant offspring (His long and flowing dreadlocks and reddish brown skin did the trick. However, he was different than Jar Jar as well, being helpful rather than stupid and annoying.)11. Die on the floor of a Jeremy and Rachel’s house afterward
12. Resurrect just in time to play with Jeremy and Rachel’s twin baby girls

Extra note: It really was an exciting, exhausting experience. By the end of it my arms were tired of rowing back to the waves, my eyes could barely open, my stomach didn’t feel too good after consuming a good deal of polluted salt water, and I felt seasick on top of it all. But I loved every minute of it and becoming a master of a wave was thrilling even if it only happened on occasion.

“So will I see you tomorrow?” asked Jar Jar, before I left the beach.

“Another day,” I replied with a smile.

Dude

When surfing the internet this last week, I found some fun answers.