Los extranjeros

During most of the trip so far, despite getting weird stares from locals, I haven’t felt very foreign, only American. There was one day though that I felt extremely foreign and exotic. We had just gotten off the Turibus in the main plaza in Lima and after watching a long, but really exciting changing of the guards we walked towards the main cathedral and museum. Inside the cathedral Casey and I got lost and separated from the group inside the tombs. On our way there we got whistled and laughed at by a bunch of elementary school boys, and unfortunately we had to pass them more than once. Once outside the cathedral, these same students approached us and asked for a photo, all while miming because they didn’t believe we could understand Spanish. At first I thought they wanted me to take a photo of them, but instead they wanted a photo with us. That was the moment I realized to them that we really were exotic and foreign, and we weren’t just being stared at because we were the annoying American tourists.