It's all part of the adventure

As I mentioned before, Scott and I were going to Lake Titicaca! We got back Friday afternoon from our little adventure up in Puno. I think getting there was half the adventure. Let us begin!

It was a cloudy and misty morning. I was not inclined to get out of bed at 6am (seriously I hate getting up early). Obviously I got my ass out of bed and got ready. I did a quick run through in my head to make sure we had everything and then Scott and I went down to flag a taxi down to the airport.... He flagged down about 5 taxis before one said they would take us to the airport. Taxi drivers are weird about going certain places at certain times around here. I don't know if Scott had on some blinders but boy oh boy was this a bit of a hoopty wagon. A little dented, faded paint, you know the usual hoopty ghetto wagon taxi. As we rounded the corner from the apartment, I realized we forgot the camera. Who has to run and go get it??? This girl!!!! I would also like to note that I am not a runner, I do not like to do it and I especially do not like to do it early in the morning. Once I acquired the almost forgotten camera and jumped back in the taxi, I started to realize how much more of a hoopty wagon this thing really was. I'm talking rusty metal floor mats, no above the door/oh shit handle bar on my side, speedometer doesn't work, and where the RPM gauge should be there is a clock! Oh man! Priceless!

As we got closer to the airport, our taxi driver needed to use his wipers. Needless to say, good ol' hoopty wagon didn't let us down in the ghetto department. The passenger side wiper started to fall off and our driver had to pull over to reattach said wiper blade.... Quality vehicle right there folks! Now as we actually got to the airport, that's when things got really special. Homie wouldn't actually drive us into the airport. He kept saying something about the police. This leads Scott and I to believe he didn't have legit paperwork for his vehicle and couldn't actually drive in there.... Thanks pal for dropping us off in front of the airport in your hoopty wagon!

Now apparently 300 meters down from where we were was the pedestrian entrance. But F that bullshit kids... No bullshit security guard could stop us from marching on through that damn parking lot and into the airport. Seriously, why would I want to walk 300 meters out of my way just to get into the airport? Thank god that was the last of the weird crazy adventures for the morning.

After a short flight, half a beer (stingy mother fuckers wouldn't give us an entire can each... made us share), the nonstop screaming child and getting bitched at because my seat was broken and wouldn't go all the way up, we arrived at Juliaca airport. They had a lovely van service that takes you from the airport to your hotel in Puno for cheap! Only S./15 per person or for the two of us and in dollar terms, just over $11. Oh and yay us! Little Screamer was sitting right behind us in the van! When silence fell, I had Scott peak behind to see if the little shit fell asleep.... Nope! Kid finally got the boobie.... Momma couldn't have offered that up like 2 hours ago? Seriously if that's all he needed, I may have very well offered up one of mine 2 hours ago just to shut the lil shit up...... Anyways, back to the awesomeness of the adventure!

Arriving in Puno! Look there's the lake!

Our hotel was pretty darn nice and we got a jacuzzi tub bitches! You know I relaxed in that :)

After a little lunch, Scott and I wandered around town a bit and walked down to the lake.

A hotel or as I liked to refer to it, Alcatraz!

A walkway across part of the lake, view towards Puno

After our lovely ride and a not so cold beer at a cevicheria, we decided a fun way to get back to the hotel would be in a pedicab!

Aren't we fucking dicks for making some guy pedal us up a hill to our hotel for only S./5 (that's about $1.85)

We wrapped up that magical cool day and cold night with some dinner, jacuzzi and drink time and an early bed time (although I had a pathetic attempt to stay up and find out who won American Idol). Now sleeping was not the best sleeping either of us have ever done. Scott is a hot body, therefore I need air movement. What did we not have in that room? Air movement.... Also at around 13,000 ft, your breathing isn't that great. Damn you air for being thin! Oh well, still logged a couple okay hours of sleep :)

Another early morning for us! We had a to get up and go on a nice tour of the lake. I made sure I was all sorts of winterized for the morning. Scott thinks I may have over dressed but I was perfectly okay with that since I was all nice and cozy and I hadn't felt temperatures that cold in over a year! This has also made me realize that I will live in multiple sweaters and a coat at one time when I go back to Washington to visit my family in December....

Heading out on our boat tour to the floating islands

What a beautiful morning! (and this is coming from a non-morning person)

Approaching the floating islands

The "Mercedes Benz" of reed boats

Island president demonstrating how the island is made

The cutest little island kids

The water is about 50 feet deep here

See all sorts of winterized :)

Told you we would ride on a reed boat :)

Cheaters!

Yay Peru!

Making yarn on the island of Taquile

Hiking up the island

Recovering from said hike up the island at 13,000ft

Well worth the view!

After lunch and about to walk down 550 steps to the tour boat

Apparently people like to drop their livestock off on very shallow areas to eat reeds

Shortly after that last picture we arrived back in Puno and got dropped off at our hotel. Crawled in the cozy bed for a few and then bundled back up to adventure out for some dinner... Dinner the night before was much better than dinner that night.... We had thought about hitting a couple bars after dinner but the realization of tiredness and knowing we had a jacuzzi tub, plus drinks in our room, changed our minds. I didn't make any pathetic attempts to watch the rerun of American Idol and I just rolled over and went to sleep by 9:30...

In the morning, after breakfast, we walked out to the Plaza de Armas to snag a couple photos of their main church since I had failed to do that the first day.

Now the flight back was a lot more uneventful, aside from Mr. BO sitting next to me... I'm not sure which is worse, the person with body odor or the screaming child. But seriously dude, European or not, a coat of deodorant or a shower won't kill you. In fact, it will help raise your popularity with your fellow passengers. Does anyone think it would be rude of me to have sample size deodorants in my carry-on to hand out if I get seated next to someone with B.O. again?

Even our taxi ride was uneventful. He knew the proper exit to take and got us home in one piece without me having an "Oh dear Jesus" moment about his driving... It was good to be home and at an elevation I could breathe properly at :)

Next adventure is in 2 weeks! Buenos Aires, here we come!

All Sorts of Happenings Going On!

Between this  blog and my cooking blog... I think I am striving for blog slacker of the year! Apparently last time I blogged on here was in February about two of my obsessions... Organization and Pinterest. Well after that I started getting my butt in gear to get this dusty apartment all sorts of sparkly fantastically clean for the arrival of my parents! Yup that's right! mis padres came to Peru! They got here on March 14th and I'm so lucky I didn't throw my Dad's back out when I jumped on him out of excitement... That really could have fucked up the trip! My parents totally messed up my awesome here they come photo by going straight out of the first sliding doors they saw instead of walking down the sea of people in search of Scott and I... So I got this picture instead when we got in the car :)

Excitement combined with tiredness! They had one of the longest travel days of their lives!

We spent a few days here in Lima before taking off on our Cusco and Machu Picchu adventure! What a cool way to spend my 26th birthday! I got to climb all over and explore Machu Picchu! How are you going to top that one Scotty?

Time to get hiking bitches!

After Cusco, we returned to Lima where we had a nice relaxing time. We even took a Mirabus tour of the city. Just so happens our bus plowed into a street light in downtown Lima... We even made the local news!

Way to go Mr. Bus Driver!

Before we knew it, it was time to take my parents back to the airport... Boooo! Two weeks with them just flew by! I did an excellent job of not crying until Scott and I were walking away... Go me! All in all, it was a great trip and could take up entirely too much of my time to blog about it (hence the choppy short version of their visit).

I really can't recall anything of great significance in April other than I swear that I blinked and it was gone. Same is going for May. Although next week, look out Puno/Lake Titicaca! Scotty and I are coming for ya!

Yup I think we need to ride on one of these

Who knows... We might even go jump in that Lake even though it's going to be freezing! Oh well! Mamma needs a little adventure in her life and you only live once right? Don't hold me to this though.

Next month Scott and I are getting on a plane again! To where you might wonder.... Well to Buenos Aires!!!

This just screams big city adventures

Hopefully that's a great fun adventure as well! Most importantly it will reset my 6 month visa allowing me to stay here in Peru with the wonderful husband that I have :)

I think that brings us up to date on the what nots and the who dids of my life... Some day I'll learn to blog about world happenings and my opinions on them... I could always start with a topic loved by all... Gay Marriage! and how gays will ruin the sanctity of the marriage institution but somehow people like Kim Kardashian don't... Till next time!

An Organized Dream

Thanks to Pinterest, I'm becoming a lot more interested in making my own stuff... Like cleaning products and laundry soap (supplies for these things have just arrived, so that will all be getting made soon)! I am also oogling and drooling over future organization projects, as well as cooking up a storm of new recipes! On one of my many endless scrollings through Pinterest, I came across this blog posting.  Read it and then come back and keep reading here....

I totally laughed at the end, cause I was like holy shit this lady is like freaking super woman times 10! Then I thought about some of it.... It's totally doable since I have nothing better to do and no kids! I don't know about making an official 90 day meal plan, but I could totally get my recipes organized off of the laptop so I can just pull the recipes out for the week. Also I should probably make print outs of the recipes so we don't have an accident involving my lap top and some sort of liquid mishap in the kitchen....

I'm already pretty darn good and keeping crap and clutter out of the house... If I could find some sort of clothing donation down here I would be getting rid of some clothes and making the husband get rid of A LOT of clothes (seriously... how many pairs of socks does a man need? They barely fit in the drawer..... I too have a few too many socks for myself so there isn't much room to talk). I'm sure the office secretary (I'm going to go with secretary as a code word for Wonder Woman, because she does entirely too much to help out the office) Claudia knows, but she is a busy lady and I don't want to force Scott into bothering over that right now... But if he remembers and has the time to ask her about it and she has the time to answser, then that would be great!

Now we come to this, "beautifully organized into colorfully labeled containers.  If you're ever visiting and you need something, just ask me - I totally know where it all is.". This is something I dream and strive for, but can't do because I want the pretty, colorful, cute, quality stuff and that just isn't really available down here... I find the cute stuff online, but then it's only available in the store or won't ship to APO/DPO/FPO... So this will be on pause for now....

We'll skip all that kid stuff for now since I don't have any of those little buggers and don't plan on trying for one for a couple of years, so I've got some time to get all that planned out... As for the budget, Husband has that pretty much under control and I get some money from him every pay day (since I don't work right now) and if I need more I can just ask, but I do try to stick to spending with in what I'm given... I"m trying to budget better with planning meals every week so I'm not taking those daily trips to the store in which I can never just buy one thing.... I just feel silly if I do... I think later on we will sit down and figure out a more defined food budget, etc...

I doubt I'll ever have a "gift" closet... and we can't really use all those handy apps while we are down here... so skip! And we'll skip the gym part because I have a gym in the building and then there is the Malecon to go walk/run on... but I just need to find the inner motivation to use either....

The photos........ yes! This is something that is going to get done! I might even start on this today :) I can totally organize my photos on this laptop... the daunting part of that task would be the waiting for the photos to upload to a back up site....

As for that date night, yes I think when children are in the picture, it will be important to try and have that set in stone date night... maybe not every week, but once a month would be good....

When she gets to that ultimate satisfaction part and then realizes it was just a dream... I hope that by starting now, before children, I can stand in the middle of my living room someday and have that satisfaction, only to realize it is reality and not a dream.......

Slept with Brazil, said hello to Argentina, and waved to Paraguay

That was one fun trip! Totally could have used another day in the awesome, warm, comforting, sunshine or Brazil....... but I'll take what I got and love it! Given a few more days I could have turned into a nice toasty golden coconut but again I'll settle for my tiny bit of a tan... Our first official day started off nice and early with our tour leaving the hotel at 7:45am! Which was more like 4:45am since Brazil is 3 hours ahead of Peru. Alrighty, we took our comfy little tour bus on over to Argentina to say hello for a day. On our way we go over a bridge between Argentina and Brazil, and just straight up the river was Paraguay. Now it costs 100 pesos a person to get into the park, but you can see why it costs so much... The set up they got is amazing! See below!

nicely done walkways leading to the train stops and catwalks

see that! I'm in Argentina!

The Devil's Throat

The little train to get you to and from different areas

well hey there! what a good lookin couple ;)

and there were a bunch of these cute little coatis... while cute, they can claw your face off....

Day two was equally fun and lovely on the Brazil side. That tour was a bit shorter so we went into the actual town and did some bodega hopping until it was time to go back to the hotel pick up our backpacks and get our ride to the airport. This trip was totally worth it and I say if you are in the neighborhood.... GO! It's really incredible how close they've built the walkways to the falls... The Devil's Throat fall is just almost unreal... And the weather was just right, not too hot, not too humid :)

The return home was irritating for a few reasons....  One being I feared returning home to the Miraflores doom and and gloom fog bank.... And I thought that getting to the airport 2 hours ahead of time and only having  backpacks would equal a swift check-in that allows me to get to the other side and have a delicious snack while waiting to get on the plane.... WRONG! Apparently LAN airlines does not believe in a separate line for people who don't have bags to check and apparently that airport has some ancient inefficient check-in system and also we have the just stand there and look pretty rather than work people means it takes over an hour to get checked in only to find out there is no delicious snacks on the other side....... only crappy looking empanadas, beer and water... not even a bag of chips... This generally equals a very cranky Annie that may or may not have had to apologize to her husband for an irritated outburst and given him permission to boop her nose as much as he wanted for the next 48 hours.......... I will totally plead the 5th on that one..... Oh and I forgot to mention the bitch in the pink/gray stripped shirt that was on our bus to the airport and behind us in line... To her I would like to say, no one wants to hear your obnoxious, loud, Portuguese speaking ass... I'm pretty sure the polar bears at the south pole could hear you... We were pushing on two hours of listening to this lady, so yes, I did want to cut her like a bad ass gangster would do... But I fear jail time and didn't have a knife.... Anyways, I didn't let crappy airport experience ruin my trip in the end... It was fabulous! And I learned next time we travel with LAN and only have backpacks, to make sure we do web check-in to speed up the checking in process and prevent any little Annie tantrums :)

But again, ignore my above complaints and go if you can! Chances are you won't have an obnoxious loudmouth Portuguese speaking bitch yammering away for 2 hours and take note of my web check-in advice (we didn't find out about that option till after we arrived at the airport).....

The next adventure is in 3 weeks when my parents arrive!!!! Woot woot! They are making the journey from Tacoma, WA to Lima, Peru!!! A few days after they arrive we go to Machu Picchu and Cusco!!!! I'm more excited about seeing Mom and Dad than the ancient shit ;) I'm so excited to show them a part of the world :) :) :)

Thanks to some Army games....

I get to go here:

Iguaza Falls in Brazil (also Paraguay and Argentina, but we are flying into and staying in Brazil)

It will be a short trip but a fun trip none the less... I'll even let the hubby use it as my Valentine's Day present since we fly out the 15th and come back the 17th :)

Now how does this relate to some Army games you ask? Well thanks to some lovely folks who are extremely disorganized and some other folks who like to sit on paper work for 3 weeks, the request to have me added onto the husband's orders went over into the "you don't have 12 months left at your duty station so we won't give her command sponsorship" category.... The sad thing is we started working this little detail at the beginning of September and thanks to the above mentioned folks, it took them until end of December to come back with that little bullshit statement.... They also somehow came up with the magical month/year of February 2013 as for how long he needs to extend down here for to get me on his orders.... Where they came up with February instead of December we aren't quite sure but I digress....  Since my tourist visa is going to expire at the end of this February, we needed a trip that got me out of Peru for 24 hours and thanks to a little special on LAN airlines, we settled on the Iguaza Falls :)

The other fun game we are playing with the Army is how long can it take for them to send out an email if the husband got selected for the new Army job he wants (again because the Army decided to be dicks about this job and he has no desire to go back to aviation)... We need that decision to decide on a lot of things. For example, extending till Feb. 2013 so that I can get put on the orders or not extending and where our next trip will be or if I will just got back to the good Ol' US of A at the end of my next tourist visa........ Oh joy oh joy.... The joys of also being married to a higher entity that is not God (as my lovely friend Anne said it best)......

"Please Sir, I want some more."

Why yes little Oliver Twist, you may! Since I've developed a new found love/addiction for Pinterest, I have come across another lovely blog with what seems like endless fantastic recipes. Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour has led me to great things like an amazing chicken enchilada pasta and a fabulous Italian chicken soup. Tonight's meal of choice was the Italian chicken soup. The fun part of these recipes is that I get to put the "I'm in Peru and I can't find that shit" twist on it. So here goes my version of the Italian chicken soup! Oh and I cut her recipe in half too since there is only two of us versus I believe four on her team. Plus another "oh and" I get to have the joy sometimes of trying to remember how many grams is equal to how many whatevers.

250g or 1/2 box of some cute shaped pasta {I used little baby shells}

olive oil {I don't measure that crap, I eyeball it accordingly}

2 chicken breasts

4 cups chicken broth

1 medium onion, diced

2 medium/large carrots, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

2 fresh jalapenos {in my case I use a random safe looking green chili I've used before} diced

1 can {28. oz} whole tomatoes, diced {don't question this just do it}

1 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp. minced fresh oregano {dried is okay too}

3  cloves crushed garlic

salt & pepper, to taste

Parmesan Cheese shavings or shredded as desired

To get started I gather up all the above shit except I leave the cheese and heavy cream in the fridge. Then I proceeded to cook my pasta according to the time listed on the package, drain it, toss with a smidge of olive oil and set aside {there's going to be a lot that setting aside thing going on for a minute}. Also while I had that going on I boiled up those chicken tits till they were cooked through. Now she does hers in the chicken broth but I didn't and that's okay cause I was making this my own little Peruvian way. Once the those chicken tits are cooled enough to tear apart, I got to shredding. Again set aside the shredded chicken. Since I had pasta cooking and chicken boiling, I started on the dicing up of the various veggies. Once those are all diced, I set those aside too.

I would say this brings us to the question of "Why on Earth would I dice up a can of whole tomatoes when I can just buy a can of already diced?" Well according to our good friend over at Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour - The whole tomatoes have more/better flavor than that of the already diced canned tomatoes. Since this was my first time whipping this up, I decided not to argue and just go along with it. You can use a can of diced if you like. I won't judge. Anyways, if you do it this way just pull out the tomatoes with a spoon and dice those babies up followed by putting them back in the can with their juices.

Now bust out your large pot to fit all this shit into, grab that olive oil and go splishity splashity with some of it {enough to coat the bottom of the pot} and getting heating up. Now toss in your onion, carrots, celery, chili and garlic and stir that around like a Merry-go-Round real quick. It should look a little something like this:

I let that goodness cook up for about 10 minutes while I occasionally stirred and sipped on a diet coke {you may have whatever beverage you like}. At about that 10 minute mark, I tossed in that shredded chicken, poured in the broth and plopped in those tomatoes with their juices. It should look just like this:

 If somehow it does not look like this, I don't know where you went wrong and you are probably screwed and should never ever cook again.

Anyways stir that baby up and sprinkle in some pepper and about 2 small dashes of salt. Now just bring that up to a boil, cover and simmer on low for like 30 minutes {I say 30 minutes because it was a little too early to eat dinner and I wanted to wrap some presents, but really just simmer long enough to heat it through and get those flavors mixing}

About that oregano! I did not have fresh {neither did Pearls} So what she did {and me too} was take the dry, add some broth and a splish of olive oil and saute that until it makes your house smell yummy, so just a few minutes. Then I added that to the pot at the above mentioned 30 minute mark and I let it simmer for about another 15 minutes. Just before I dished us up, I poured in the heavy cream plus that precooked pasta and gave it a good stir while I had Scott shredding up that parm. Scooped some up into two bowls sprinkled some parm on top. It looked a little some like this:

Ta-da!!!! I served some ciabatta bread with olive oil and basalmic on the side. It had great flavor and would be good anytime of year. It's filling enough but not so heavy you can't have it on a summer day. I would say this was a win. That's right Charlie Sheen, this soup was "winning".

Clearly I have been slacking

I must be the world's worst blogger, well at least in my mind I am... It seriously has been since July that I last blogged and I wrote a thriller of a blog about removing gum from the dryer! How freaking exciting am I? I guess I'll do the sparknotes.com version of what's been happening (which after August is not a whole lot). July was relatively boring other than a broken hot water heater followed by the pressure release valve popping off and creating a mini rain forest like setting in my laundry room causing me to panic and scream like a little girl (which I managed to overcome and handle like an adult), a trip to Nazca and the arrival of my wedding dress.

August was a lot more exciting. That involved a trip to North Dakota to party with some of my favorite people and watch my new sister-in-law get married as well. Scott and I decided to jump on the band wagon and get married the following week... Probably one of the best days of my life to date... August 20th, 2011. On a side note, Kim Kardashian decided to have her wedding that day too! I should have bet her the $10 million she spent on her wedding that mine would last longer... Way to go the distance Kim! I can now say I've been happily married for almost 90 days. Go me! It probably helps that I actually like and love the person I married, even though I have a tendency to call him asshole and jackass frequently.

September was a snooze. I really can't recall anything super awesome other than my mom's birthday and my grandma's and my cousin's birthday too. So let's just skip to October.

October was host to my wonderful husband's birthday (see I don't always think he's a jackass or an asshole). I did my best to make it special with balloons, a cake made from scratch (no i didn't use the mix in the box and qualify it as from scratch) and some delicious steaks and baked potatoes... We went to Paracus that weekend which was a nice quite fishing town. I think my favorite moment of October is when I went to Mrs. Schauber's Halloween Coffee on the 17th...... I will accept the jackass of the month award for this one... The bottom part of the invite has black text which kinda went into a black background, so I tried to copy and paste the text to see if it was a costume or no costume required party... Well I ended up thinking it said costumes required... I drive over there and show up in my army girl pinup costume only to have her open the door to everyone dressed in regular casual attire.... How freaking embarrassing..... I really wanted to cry and run back in the elevator but I did what I do best and I rolled with the situation and enjoyed myself until I got home where I chose to continually beat myself up for looking like a jackass..... When Halloween actually rolled around, I didn't even dress up like I usually do and just went out with the husband to dinner and drinks..

November so far has been pretty good. At the beginning of the month Scott and I went to the Marine Corps Ball which was a total blast even with the crazy drama at the end of the night. You know it's not a good night unless some drunk asshole who claims to be a US citizen but is Iranian shows complete and utter disrespect for the US and it's service members tries to assault one of your friends. Let's just say our favorite drunk asshole got what he deserved and all of us were for the most part unharmed (us ladies were just a little shaken up from the unnecessary drama). This Sunday I might go to a bull fight. Now since I love animals and my idea of fun isn't watching a bull get killed at the end of a bull fight, I might not have the best time. It is part of the culture and the adventure though, so that's why I'm going to go anyways. A week from now is Thanksgiving. This would be the first Thanksgiving I'm hosting. I think it should turn out fine. I wish I knew where there was like an arts and crafts store around here because I would love to get my DIY on and make an awesome centerpiece so that I look like a cool, young, hip Martha Stewart...

Anyways, now that we are all caught up basically, I'll try to come up with a fun witty blog in between my endless surfing of Facebook and playing Cityville on FB..... Ta Ta for now folks!