October 15, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
Hi. How's it going?
Good to hear (hopefully). Everything's great here, thanks for asking.
It is monday here in Peru, as it probably is many other places in the world, and we're all probably waking up with the same general "monday" feeling. The weekend was absolutely joyous, and I had the same "why don't we make weekends three days long?" thoughts I have every monday.
I didn't really feel like breakfast because a couple of the guys and I decided to go to the only "American-style" fast food restaurant in Cusco, called "Bembo's" that has AMAZING fries and ketchup...the burgers are pretty sick though.
There's actually quite a story to this: we were all studying hard for our midterm on tuesday pretty much all afternoon/night, so we decided we'd end the night on a fantastic note. Off we went into the chilly Cusco night at 11:30 in the pm, with only one thought on our minds: hot, crispy, ketchup-laden Bembo's brand french fries in our bellies. The excitement and anticipation felt before such an event can probably only be compared to two things: running to where you know buried treasure is in order to dig it up, and waiting for Bembo's fries to be delivered to your room after ordering them out, which isn't possible as far as I know, but it would be amazing. Anyways, we finally arrive at the Plaza, with nobody hassling us to go to this place or that as usually happens, because they can tell by the way we're walking and where we're looking that we are not going to be swayed from our course. A few joyously satisfied Bembo's customers walking across the Plaza exchange knowing nods and smiles with us as we approach our destination because they know what we're feeling, and we know that we're going to be feeling how they're feeling in a couple minutes. Tonight, we are brothers.
We enter the building and step up to the register in such a way that the cashier immediately knows we are not messing around. He immediately puts his game face on as we prepare to serve up our order. We go for three large fries and a large order of onion rings right off the bat. We receive the order in good time, being provided a total of three, yes '3', ketchup packets with our order. I give a little chuckle as I take the tray away. Obviously, they've never had any real french fry eaters in this restaurant before. I head for the main ketchup dispenser immediately, take the onion rings out of the tub, and proceed to fill it with ketchup. I head back to the table and the boys and I eliminated those fries and rings like Jean Claude van Damme eliminates anyone who even breathes in his direction.
So what do we do next you ask? Well, the only thing we could do: order another three large fries. I'm sure no fewer than 10 customers and employess witnessed this, and at least three customers dropped the food they were eating...the rest just dropped their jaws. The cashier stumbled back after the order was uttered and barely managed to stammer it back to confirm, knowing that it was only seconds ago that our first order had been placed. Needless to say, our tray was totally clean at the end of it all and we left the restaurant with looks from the employees analogous to looks LeBron James got in games during high school from spectators of the opposing team. In case the analogy is at all unclear, these were looks of awe, awe and respect. haha
So, that's the memory I had in my head this morning. Needless to say, I was still in a pretty good mood.
We all went to class, then had lunch, and then had to get all our supplies out for our trip to Manu so that a couple inspectors from one of the organizations in Manu could make sure that we weren't bringing anything too ridiculous on the trip. For some reason, they said I probably couldn't bring my xbox, La-z-boy, jacuzzi, pool table, and 42in. plasma screen on the trip. Guess they weren't kidding when they said we'd be roughing it haha. Everything seemed to go well with the inspections, and I can assure you that everyone wiped their sweat-laden brows with no fewer than two paper towels as soon as they made their exit.
After the inspections, we then packed our stuff back up and studied for the rest of the afternoon, evening, and night for our midterm tomorrow. Rather unexciting, I know, but I suppose these days must come and all that one can do is reminisce of the good days gone by and the good days that are sure to come...
