I had a dream recently...

...that I was eating popcorn. I do so frequently when I watch the TV show, ´Ace of Cakes´ with my roomie, Katrina, in the evenings. When I woke up the next morning, I panicked when I realized that, while dreaming, I had put an actual earplug in my mouth thinking it was a piece of popcorn. Luckily, I didn´t chew or swallow it. What if I had been dreaming of a eating a candy bar ...would I have taken a bite out of my cell phone? (mental note: take all sharp objects off bedside table).

I never did weird stuff like that in the U.S.

It got me thinking about other unusual stuff I have done while in Lima.

* I regularly buy my eggs at the gas station by my house.

* I keep extra 2 L bottles of water and a bucket in the kitchen in case our building decides to randomly shut off the water in the 6am-8am morning rush and I need to give myself a sponge bath.

* I buy unrefrigerated (non-powdered) milk.

* I re-use my plastic ziplock bags from the US because the ones here suck. (Big thank yous to Juli and Juan for keeping me supplied...).

* I shave my legs with men´s shaving cream because they don´t sell shaving cream for ladies. I don´t care if I smell like Old Spice, it is better than smelling like mold (and being hairy).

The other day, a Peruvian friend of mine, Irma, was telling me about a wedding she went to in Lima of a Peruvian-American couple. Knowing that their American and Peruvian guests have two different sense of time, they decided to send out two different invitations. To the Americans, they sent out an invitation that said that the wedding would start at 7pm. To the Peruvians, one that said it would start at 5pm. Genuis. (Despite being Peruvian, Irma is extremely punctual. She was on the ´Peruvian list´ and received the 5pm invite. She showed up at 5:05pm and the church was locked and there was not a single car in the parking lot. Oops. )

Ah, the unusual things you gotta do to make life work in Lima.