Back in Peru

This will just be a short post, as I have been forgetting to take pictures lately. I will have a new update between Christmas and New Years that will have a bit more!

I arrived back in Minnesota the week before Thanksgiving. I was hoping that I'd bring the cold weather from winter in Peru back with me, and based on the fact that the Vikings just played outdoors because the Metrodome collapsed under the weight of the snow - I think I was successful! My family had planned a nice steak dinner for me at a nice restaurant the night that I got home, but unfortunately the food that Delta gave me on the airline had different plans. To quote the guy next to me on the plane, "Not feeling so great, eh?" Lucky for him, he was sitting by the window and didn't have to get up for all of my trips back and forth to the bathroom! I ended up with food poisoning and was sick for the next two days and missed my steak dinner...

My first weekend back home, I went up north with my friends Greg, Grant, and Matt to spend some time trying to hunt. We had high aspirations going into the weekend that we would come away with at least one deer, but I guess maybe we should've left our friend Jim Beam at home if that was really the case! It turned out to be a great weekend of catching up and seeing good friends, so none of us were too upset with our lack of deer to bring home.

One thing that was a big change living back home with my parents is how much I ate! Between having a gringo Thanksgiving before returning to the states, real Thanksgiving with my family back home, a nice (huge) dinner with my friend Rachel Tucker and her family, my family Christmas, and all of the other large meals that us Americans eat, I ending up gaining back half the weight that I had lost in the past six months in Peru!

I also got a chance to go with my Rob to the Minnesota vs. Iowa football game while I was home. We met up with my friend Tyler and his family to tailgate, saw a lot of families of friends from back in high school at Mounds View, managed to get ourselves down to the front row of the student section and watched an INCREDIBLE game that we won! It was by far the most exciting Gopher football game that I've ever been to! You can see me at about the 1:00 mark of this video running in from the back corner. I guess we ran on the field to early and almost had the cops escort us out... Oops!

I'm now back in Lima at a new apartment in Miraflores. I am still living with Beto (Beth just left to return to the US) and now I am also living with my old friend Angie (or Angela as she is trying to go by...). I have known Angie ever since we were about 4 or 5 years old, we kind of fell out of touch, but by a lucky chance ended up running into my sisters this past summer. My sister Katie told her all about her experience in Peru doing research, she sent an email to Dr. Gilman, and is now down here living with me and starting up some research of her own!

I still have my Barney costume so I decided that along with Winnie the Pooh (Matt Painschab) we'd go to different hospitals and visit children and pass out Christmas presents. Sometime next week, I'll have some pictures from that, along with an update about spending Christmas with Beto and his family.

Merry Christmas!