This blog would be less boring if my life was

I skipped Spanish class the other day and went to the big Tourist Artisan market near where we live. There's nothing like being in a market the size of a football field surrounded by tens of thousands of handmade products and not being able to find a single thing you would like to buy. Everyone sells the exact same tourist junk, stall after stall, you'd think someone would come up with something more interesting than an alpaca hat, a poncho and a reed flute. I mean the cheap labor is there, the materials are there, there just needs to be someone with some new ideas. I guess the tourist industry as a whole just breeds tacky junk wherever it is in the world.

Alexa is growing and speaking more and more and has developed her own mini-language. It takes time to understand, but it has a system and it's own rudimentary grammar. It's a mixture of Spanish and English, so every noun takes the definite marker "la", as in "la papa" and "la mama". "ayi" (a derivative of the Spanish for "there") is the action verb, as in "la fishy ayi" = I want to see the fishes, or "ayi la mama" = take me to mom. As far as I can tell it's both a SOV (Subjet Object Verb) language as well as a VOS. "tu" (spanish for "you") is the question marker, as in "a umm tu" (umm is food) = will you give me something to eat?, and "tu ayi" = will you pick me up? "all done" as well as "no" are the negative markers, as in "mama adone" = mom is gone. She also mixes in the baby sign language we taught her, making the language very advanced indeed, a downward motion of the hand over the face while putting the fingers together (the sign for "tired") combined with "la book" = I'm tired, read me a book and put me to sleep. Then when she puts her finger up her nose and says "mas la cabeza" = I have a lot to think about right now, let me contemplate my existence.

My entire family is at a reunion on the Oregon coast that I wish I could be at, but the financial situation on a Peruvian income is tight and airline prices are ridiculous. To get the whole family up there would have cost 3k, which is like 6 months income in Lima.

I am itching to get out of Lima and see the amazing countryside - I'm dying to just get out of the apartment most days, the only thing there is to do is: go to the park and see the goldfish pond on the way, then run around the park with the dogs, especially these four little white poodles that are always there that Alexa walks, or is walked by. Then we walk down to this mall on the side of the cliff that has those creepy oversized cars and horses that move around when you put money in them.

I thought the sign to the left was funny - you usually name streets after something you are proud of, but then maybe Peru is proud of the Inquisition.