Since it was a holiday, most everyone had the day off from work, so we went to the park! It was a great way to spend the day..much appreciated and lots of fun!
We had 3 carloads of people, so there were 15 of us! Fortunately, it only cost S/. 5 per car to park and S/. 2.50 per person for entry. Big spendahs.
It was a bit breezy and cool when we got there, so I was not inclined to just sit still and immediately picked up a ball and started hitting it around. Eventually, we got a rope tied up between 2 trees and we started to play semi-competitively.
After a bit of that, we had to take a lunch break. I don't know about you, but when I go on a picnic, I bring sandwiches, maybe some potato salad or something prepared like that from the grocery store, a bottle of water and some cans of soda, and some packaged snacks. Well, that's not how they roll here. One group of the family brought "chaufa," which is basically homemade fried rice. Another group brought this potato and beets mixture. And Graciela cooked and shredded chicken for us to make chicken salad sandwiches. [The sandwiches were quite the to-do! Wilfredo mixed up the mayo and Huancaina sauce bags, so when he pulled it out to make sandwiches, well, he was kind of distraught. He didn't want to have anything to do with this sandwich business because it was sure to be bland for lack of salt. Eventually, Consuelo took over and added the Huancaina, Mirtha gave it the taste test, then everyone, including Wilfredo, had a Huancaina chicken salad sandwich. Oh the drama!] To drink, we had homemade chicha morada, some Inca Kola (cuz that's what the Incans drank!), and water. Plus, we had an assortment of apples, bananas, and mandarine oranges to choose from as well. It was quite the gourmet picnic lunch!
After lunch, I got up and hit the ball around with Carlos for a bit while everyone let their food settle and set up the rivalry of boys against girls. Then, we played vball, boys against girls. Well, Consuelo was on the boys' team because we were one boy short for even teams. Apparently, she was their good luck charm! They beat us 3:4 and the 1 the girls' team won was when Consuelo sat down for a moment. At any rate, it was a lot of fun to play volleyball again and I appreciate that they actually play volleyball and keep track of the score and have a little competition, not just chaos.
After prolonging the losing streak for a bit, we finally broke out and played some other things. Some kicked around the soccer ball. Marlene re-purposed the volleyball net rope so we could play some jump rope (salta de soga) and tug-of-war. I got pretty good at the jump rope, but tug-of-war is not my game. I blame the rope. It actually started stretching when we got 5 people of each side of it, I haven't played before, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't help anyone to have the rope get longer. Just sayin'..
Finally, the boys (I'm not sure why it was boys only, but it was) played a quick game of soccer. While we waited, Melissa and I hit around the volleyball, which brought back memories of being on my high school volleyball team. Bump - Set - Spike!
We packed everything up and headed out (the long way so we could see the ducks, ostrich, and horses from the zoo and the random lake). I was feeling very grateful and thankful for the bonding time, the outdoors/nature time, and sporty time with my Peruvian Family.
And today, I hurt ALL OVER. I haven't played those sports (especially not for more than 4 hours at a time) in sooooo long! Oish. But still happy we had such a great time :D So blessed.
~nos vemos~
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