JAS Day 2: Granja Porcon

• We had to be at one of the chapels at 7:30 the next morning to catch buses to head to Granja Porcon.  We started a little late and then there were some speakers but we finally got out around 9:00.

• We had to take five large “greyhound” buses up for the 1 hour 20 minute ride.  They gave everyone bags because they said a lot of people would get altitude sickness.  Happy to report none of us did!  It’s lucky we’ve been here a month and a half and had time to get acclimated or else I’m sure we would have.  It’s at 12,000 feet.
• Bus ride there:  We were some of the last people on the bus so we all got split up.  This was a blessing because we were each forced to practice our Spanish with whoever sat next to us.  EVERYONE else slept the entire trip but our bus buddies wouldn’t hear of it.  I met Luiz.  He’s 28 years old, from Chiclayo, and a chef.  I held a Spanish conversation for an entire bus ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Can we please have a moment of silence for this momentous occasion?  I didn’t even have a dictionary to grab if I needed it.  I had to have him repeat himself a lot and asked many times for him to speak slower…but we did it.  He even complemented my Spanish a few times.  It was a nice confidence boost.  I think I know more than I give myself credit for.  I should work on that.

Luiz

• Before experiencing Granja Porcon we attended a class.  I think they had a few different classes going on and ours was on finding your eternal mate.  This is a good time to mention that anytime anyone spoke during this convention it was about dating and marriage.  It was almost worse than BYUI, believe it or not.
• What is Granja Porcon???  It’s basically a zoo in the middle of the Andes!  Literally in the middle of nowhere.  There’s a little village right there but nothing else.  Just gorgeous mountains and lots of dangerous animals.  It’s unlike any American zoo.   There aren’t laws here about how much space animals need so they were in tiny cages.  I felt bad for the animals but I guess it’s nice because they can’t hide in some other part of the cage haha  Also, the fences were NOT high fences.  I think the monkeys could have just jumped out of theirs if they climbed high enough in the tree and the lions and tigers were in ones maybe 15 feet high. 
• They had a squirrel in the zoo.  A SQUIRREL.  There were also lions, tigers and bears OH MY!  Many different types of exotic  birds, parrots that would repeat Spanish, emus, monkeys, condors, leopards, more birds, and lots of unknown animals because I don’t know their names in Spanish but they were cool.

Note the little girl with her pants down in the back...5 seconds before this picture she didn't have underwear either.

Condor

Tigers

He spoke in Spanish

Ugliest chicken I've ever seen...it looked like the brain was sitting on it's head instead of inside it.

All the birds had water dishes that said "I <3 My Dog"

• We found a huge rock that we wanted to take some pictures on.  This was a great idea, until EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER wanted to take a picture with us up there.  Seriously, we had old people climbing up this rock to get a picture with us.  And never just one picture, it was a series of pictures.  And then they would get down and their friend would hop up.  And then when we thought we were done we’d start to climb down and someone would come running up and tell us to stay there because they wanted one too.  And then their friend would get up after them.  And then they would want a group picture.  Are you getting this pattern?  We stood on that rock for a good 10 minutes taking pictures with people.  Then we got down and MORE people wanted pictures and we did the entire process all over again.  We started getting creative at this point because our smiles were becoming forced.  They didn’t mind…I think they like the goofy ones better anyways.

See?  Even old men wanted their picture with us :)

• We walked around the zoo for a good hour.  It was hard with such a big group because there were people everywhere and I would have liked to have spent more time watching the animals.
• We all gathered in a big grassy area for group pictures after we all got out of the zoo part.  Have you ever tried to organize a couple hundred YSA for a picture?  Doesn’t really work haha  Hopefully they got a few good shots.  After, we had another round of picture taking with people.  We spent a good 20 minutes bouncing from group to group, posing and smiling.  I won’t lie, it was a little uncomfortable after a bit.  I mean, it was fun and I’ll never have that much attention again (well, maybe my wedding day) but I really hope people don’t think we’re super vain girls.  I definitely got a taste of what it’s like to be a celebrity.

Everyone at the Convention

Cajamarca Stake

• We had lunch provided for us.  They brought out this noodle soup with a chunk of unknown meat and we thought that’s all we were getting.  It was good soup, but not enough to fill us.  Thankfully, more food came later and we had (surprise) rice, potatoes and chicken.  Again, not my favorite, but not bad.  Sadly, there was no dessert :(

• The bathrooms don’t have toilet paper…or toilet seats.  Ricardo was nice enough to lend us some of his toilet paper.  We really need to start bringing a roll with us wherever we go.

• After lunch we went outside and sat on the side of a little road since the grass was wet (and probably had all sorts of animal poop in it).  As we were laying there Ricardo started calling us cows!  He’s called us fat before so it wasn’t surprising but when we started yelling at him we realized he wasn’t calling US cows, he was telling us there was a herd of cows walking 10 feet from our heads!  

 

• Random people took pictures of us when we were laying down…awkward. 

We had Ricardo take this one for us...but there are also a good 7 or 8 Peruvians who have this exact picture.

• We tried Choko Soda crackers.  They were like saltines dipped in chocolate and were DELICIOUS.  They tasted like those round cookies with a hole in the middle with the bottom dipped in chocolate and the top drizzled. 
• We made sure to sit next to each other on the bus home so we wouldn’t have to talk to people again.  I think we all got in a nice nap.  I stayed awake for a little bit because I wanted to see the scenery of the gorgeous Andes Mountains but sleep won out in the end!