Thursday: Leadership and Carabayllo with Enrique

Seems like my blog posts always start off with food, so here goes. On Thursday, I headed with Enrique to San Martin de Porres to watch him give his leadership presentation to a group of high school students. First we ate fried yucca and aji de gallina. It was AMAZING. Check out the crispy goldenness of this fried yucca. It's like French fries but thicker and different and better. It came with ocopa sauce.

The aji de gallina was kind of like non-spicy curry but better.

The group of students Enrique taught. They started off so nervous but he really taught them confidence and how to lead. I was impressed. :)

The students presenting their example of leadership.

Enrique did a lot of funny stuff to make them laugh and be less nervous, like posing for pictures I was taking.

The girls loved me and kept wanting to talk to me even though I barely did anything. They wanted my email address and my Facebook and photos with me. ;)

After the presentation, we all chatted and I decided I am definitely heading back to that school for one of the sex ed classes! The kids were so nice.

Enrique and I took a few buses to his house in Carabayllo, about two hours from Jesus Maria where I live. He let me sleep on his stomach during the long ride, haha.

Enrique's mom served us delicious mazamorra, which is like a cross between pudding, syrup, and jello, and has fruit inside!! Here's a picture of our tasty mazamorra. My hand is so white it cannot be seen. We had apples and a peach inside of our mazamorra.

Enrique told me about how his family used to live in just a tiny room all together, but his father built the beautiful house in which they currently live, with tile floors and everything. They used to be so poor, but now they all have computers and this is their flatscreen TV. Damn!

Unfortunately, his dad is very sick. I did get a chance to speak with him for just a few minutes, which was a good sign because often he can't speak.

Enrique accompanied me alllll the way back to Jesus Maria, in one combi, one epic fast bus, and one taxi. The epic, fast bus was the Metropolitano, a new system with dedicated lanes and subsequently no traffic that costs the same as the other buses! Only like 1 or 2 soles to take an hour-long trip in half the time. I said, "It's like Japan!" and Enrique was like, "Yep, like Japan." :)