Out of the House!

I got out of the house today. God, it felt soooooooo good.

Of course, I didn't have the guts in me to do it on my own. So K joined me. She's 6, cute, and that gives me an excuse not to have to talk to anyone and gives me someone to "preoccupy" myself with.

I wore the poor thing out.

I noticed that I have a habit out in public of biting my lower lip. Ugh. Probably a nervous reflex.

Everything was on sale...except the only two skirts I found that I actually liked. Great. No, I didn't buy them. I'm on a budget. They won't fit in those limitations!

So.

My rambling for the day centers around the idea of the fact that I'll go to Perú alone but not leave my house to go shopping.

I thought a lot about this today, as I am Within Two Weeks Of Departure. Why does this not give me any problems?

1. I have professional purpose down there. Check.
2. I am so obviously a foreigner there that my missteps or my lack of boob job or my true-not-colored hair or my lack of mass amounts of makeup are just part of my "exoticism" (yes I am being sarcastic--I used to believe myself exotic when I was 20. That is faaaaar behind me now!), not a drawback.
3. I have such a different personality when I speak Spanish...I'm much more forward, much more direct, and am working to master the art of double-speak...I have fun with Spanish. It's a very sexual language, too...when speaking with someone, you must address the gender of that person. I like that. A man has to identify a woman as a woman by making everything having to do with her grammatically "female", and a woman does the same back to a man. I think that is just a glorious constant recognition of the other.
4. Manners abound (among the natives, not the non-Spanish speaking gringos bumbling through the streets) and that is lovely. I make eye-contact with someone, s/he smiles and says Good Afternoon, and a comment about the weather might ensue (if the sun actually shines through the Lima garua, that can be a glorious conversation starter). Pleases and Thank-yous are exchanged. People offer pardons when they bump into you. It is more a reflection of how I was raised than anything I witnessed here today.
5. Sure, it is not the safest city in the world, but I have survived a lot of stuff I probably should not have. If I die, at least I will die doing something I love doing.
6. I love to talk to taxi drivers. Period. I can become my own person, I can make up my own identity and my own story (or not) and they will never know. They're just thrilled to get to talk to a long-legged Spanish-speaking gringa.
7. If I get to go dancing, well...that just speaks for itself. Table dancing died for me in early 20s, but I still LOVE to salsa, merengue and cumbia, and follow a good leader decently well...and I no longer have to be drunk to dance well.
8. Service rocks. You are waited on well, even in the cheapest holes-in-the-wall if you even look like you might want more water. In department stores you are treated like a Goddess. The dependientas set you up, look you up and down and tell you in 5 seconds your size and get you four different pairs of jeans to try on and voila, if something doesn't work they are right there to help you get something else. And all this with a smile, no clicking of the tongue, rolling of the eyes and the "oh, just get it yourself why don'cha?" look.

So there we go. I will go to Lima but I won't go downtown here by myself. I actually feel I know my way around Lima better than this city. Funny, perspective...