We (My host family, Gracie, and I) left early that morning from Lima so that we could arrive at a decent time. Before we had left for Ica, I had warned Gracie that it would be terribly hot and sunny (Ica is the city of sun). However when we arrived, the sun wasn't in sight, something I found a little disheartening. The sun ended up being absent for the majority of our visit (sadly). Despite the sun, we arrived exhausted to out house in Ica. Upon our arrival, everyone went to lie down and take a break, as the journey from Lima to Ica had been early (that is for Peruvian standards).
But, before Gracie and I could catch some shut eye, we had already made plans with the exchange students in Ica to meet up. This meant that Gracie and I collapsed on the bed in exhaustion before we had to muster the energy to go eat and later leave. So after a lunch of chicken and rice (the normal) Gracie and I left my house and got into a moto-taxi from the street and got ourselves to a mall so that we could see all our friends. We first saw Anna (USA) and her Peruvian friend. Before long we had gone up to the food court where we set our sights on Pia (Germany) and Victor (Denmark). We all sat there catching up while Pia and Anna ate their lunches. Afterwards we made a quick stop in the grocery store before we all left for Huancachina, or the oasis in Ica.
We all ended up clambering out of a taxi and heading for the lake (which Gracie had never seen). Once we got there, Anna told us the story of the lake/pond in the desert which I think had been told to me in Spanish my first time there (all of which I didn't understand). According to legend a princess or siren was bathing. She looked into her mirror, and she saw a man approaching. She thought that the man was trying to kill her (or he was trying not really sure) so she transformed. Her dress became the dunes and her mirror became the lake. And now her spirit haunts the lake, she drowns men because she is afraid that they will kill her. Or it was something like that. Anyways, after story time, we all hiked up a small dune to sit, admire the view, listen to music and catch up a little bit more. We ended up sitting down and taking pictures for around an hour. After about an hour had passed, we all decided to walk back towards the lake so that we could find a car to take us up into the dunes. It didn't take long, and before we knew it we had boarded a dune buggy. While we thought we had gotten a deal on our cart, we were then slapped in the face with a "tax" which bumped the cost back up to what it had been prior (roughly). While none of us were particularly happy about this, we all stayed in the buggy and went for the ride. The ride was awesome and exhilarating. While the majority had gone once, it was Gracie's first ride. She compared it to a roller coaster, which I find to be a little accurate.
After the ride Pia, Victor, Gracie, and I all squeezed into a moto-taxi (I was sitting on laps) and went to a random place so that Gracie and I could get some tacos. Now, the place was simply a window and a menu, but the Mexican food I had here was the best I had encountered in Perú, hands down. Gracie and I were so overjoyed we forgot our exhaustion and happily chowed down in Burritos, tacos, and quesadillas. It would have been the end to a perfect night except it wasn't the end, and there was a turn of events.
While we were eating, Gracie got a text message from a random number from a friend of our good friend Elsbeth. The text was that Elsbeth and a friend of hers had been robbed at gunpoint. Of course Gracie and I were now worried and we started communicating back in forth with Els, who had to get a hold of her parents so that the family could block her cards from being used. Elsbeth was able to remain calm in the situation (something I'm not surprised of) and we got everything under control as best we could seeing as we were Ica and not with Elsbeth. Overall, I am just thankful that she is okay and that nothing bad happened (minus the fact that all of her possessions are now gone).
After getting Elsbeth all the help we could, we set back off to my house via moto. Having not really lived in Ica, it was needless to say, a little difficult to direct a moto taxi to my house in the dark when I really didn't know where we were going (the moto taxi took a different path). It didn't help that my Ica friends had told me that I lived in one of the unsafer parts of Ica. A ter taking a sketchy path through a dirt road, Gracie and I safely arrived by moto to our house. We paid the kind man, walked upstairs, and then realized that no one was home. Calling my host mom several times resulted in nothing, although banging on the door did. Our neighbor who lived downstairs came out to see what all the ruckus was. We then talked to him and he allowed us up and into the house. Knowing we had a quinceañero to attend to, Gracie and I decided to shower while we waited for my host family to get home.
Eventually my host mom called us, and later my family all arrived home so that Gracie and I were able to fully get ready (alongside them). We all got around and left an hourish later. I personally thought that we were going to be very late for the party, as we were supposed to have left around an hour or two in advance. After finding the quinceanero, I realized that we were nowhere near late. We were in fact, early. We first saw Jeanne and Marguerite, who had unfortunately been at the party for two hours waiting for it to start. This came as a shock to me, as Jeanne's family has a larger reputation for being late.
Eventually the ceremony started. It was fairly grand, with a troop of young teenage boys in suits with swords. There were speeches (of course), dances (obviously), and tears shed (not surprised). After the ceremony, the party began. I was surprised to see that as large as the venue was, there were not many people there. Nonetheless, we all got the party started. Jeanne (France), Marguerite (France, brought by Jeanne), Gracie (USA, brought by me), Naty (my host sister), all of my cute little cousins, and I, got the party going in our little separate room for the "kids". I say kids because thats what it felt like, somehow my mind didn't connect that all the people of a quinceanera would be 15 or a bit younger. Nonetheless we had fun dancing by ourselves and with all my younger cousins that have all wiggled their way into my American heart.
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| Entry Way |
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| One of the Dance Floors |
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| The pool |
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| During the ceremony. |
In all honesty, the exhaustion had hit Gracie and I quite hard at this point, and our group soon all dispersed and went back to the table. We ate the food they brought (which included some delicious vegetables! No sarcasm here) and continued to steal food from the snack table. We ended up going back and forth for the rest of the night, before exhaustion finally took over and we all started to take naps at the table. We ended up getting to leave around 4 am, although my host mom and aunt stayed until 6 :)
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