Fish. They slap you. With water.

I am writing this after just having drunk a passion fruit, apple-banana, maca, noni, flax, chia seed, raw honey smoothie! Oh the joy!

It is really interesting with the local culture here. Aubrey was telling us today that the peruvian family that lives and works for her and Dionisio have a terrible, bland diet. Which comes as a total surprise for me, because there is a plethora of fresh super fruits and enough veggies to easily eat raw here, if one wanted to. As humans it is so easy to take things for granted. I wonder if living here you become so accustomed to amazing fruits, that perhaps you just don't think to eat them??? Still trying to mentally wrap my head around this idea that someone can live where there is so many great foods growing abundantly, yet they choose to eat refined sugar, starches, breads, and grains instead??? Such an interesting paradigm this is, in Tarapoto, Peru. The standard of living is pretty damn low, especially when accustomed to the American way.

Peruvians here love their pig, and meats of all shapes and size. The other day at the market with Estela (the woman who works for Aubrey), we went over by the meat and fish to pick up some fish for Aubrey. I am walking casually along, when BAM all of a sudden I am splashed by grey water. I look to my right, and low and behold, there are live fish flapping about on a tray. ??!!!! They were splashing their own fishy water onto everything. I probably looked crazy, because I just stood there and gawked. Hey, at least we know the fish is a fresh as can be! I am laughing right now as I am typing this, because it is such an absurd sight for us Americans to get used to. Also probably more crazy is the fact that there is live meat stacked up pretty high, and touching dirty surfaces. Flies and all sorts of other things that I don't want to think about, are buzzing around. The Peruvian's working the booth, sit there in the heat, waving a newspaper or a fly swatter to help keep the meat bug free.

So at any restaurant, it seems that the only vegetarian option is a small side salad, or some fruit juice. They love their meat cooked a million ways. If you aren't eating a meat dish, you can find fish. I did have some cerviche the other day, and it wasn't too bad. ( Not my first time though either). Aubrey and Dio say there are only really two legit restaurants in the town, and they happen to be right next door to one another by a main plaza.  When I go to other countries one of my favorite things to do is to try their native cuisine. I am looking forward to exploring as much as I can on the vegetarian end of the spectrum while I am here.

Phoenix and I have yet to really get our own diet and meal preparations down though. I have made some simple salads, some rice, some fried broccoli and carrots, some smoothies, and yogurt and granola. That is pretty much it. Since we don't have all of the spices that we are used to, or a good way to carry a whole lot of groceries- it has been an interesting experience. Everything we buy, we have to carry by hand. Then take a motocarro back to the property. There is also only one grocery store in all of Tarapoto. I think the coolest thing about the store is that they have powdered Maca, Lucuma, Noni, and all sorts of other local super-foods. Wednesday and Saturday are the big market days, so I look forward to getting up early tomorrow and heading out to the market place and stocking up on more necessities.

As far as my time being spent- the days feel very long here. Mostly because I have nothing ever pressing to do. I have taken some mini walks, spent time learning from Phoenix in the lab, read, read some more, meditated, eaten, taken showers, talked, talked some more, made love, made love again, looked at nature, went to town, and various other things along those lines. I am looking forward to finding more dance teachers so I can at least keep occupied some. If i spend 40 days like this I will either go crazy, or have some major life breakthroughs. I am hoping it is the later.

With much sunshine,
Norianna Banana