Gringo In Peru

Saturday was baby shower day here in Peru.

A baby shower here really isn’t that much different than one back home. There’s food, there’s women and no men. In fact, I was the only guy there (besides the waiters, more on that in a minute) until I left to meet my old factory™ mates for lunch.

There are some differences. After all, there were waiters hired to serve the food. The wait staff (two guys) walk around constantly offering finger food and drinks. Since this was a late morning, early afternoon affair juice and soda was served. There was a mimosa option, but the party planners decided against it. It is also common for people hosting these things to rent a toldo, which is like a big outdoor canopy.

This baby shower was more like a luncheon than a shower. There were 60 people invited and I’m told they all showed. The party started at 10:30, by the time I left at 11:30 about half of the guest list had arrived. That’s pretty good for Peruvians. They are always late. No, this isn’t stereotypical. Peruvians readily admit that they are never on time and it was a constant problem at the factory™.

People socialized, ate and watched V open her presents. I left before the present opening. I met my former co-workers at the mall for rotisserie chicken. You can’t get any more Peruvian than that. It was good to see those crazy kids again. It’s probably the last time I’ll see them. Who knows if our paths may cross in the future.

There was another significant last on Saturday. My last bus ride. Since I happened to have my camera with me I snapped a few pictures of the bus. It wasn’t the cleanest I’ve been on, but it wasn’t the worst. The bus was mostly empty when I started shooting. When I took the the first picture the flash caught a girl sitting a few seats ahead of me looked at me funny and started laughing. It’s good to know the gringo still has some entertainment value.

The clock is ticking. Just four more days and we’ll be back in the U.S.A.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.