Dinner? Check. New Friend? Check. Mindfulness? Check.

As implied, I'm already back to submit my next blog entry, mere hours after having written the first! I just returned from a very lovely dinner down in the hotel restaurant, made all the more lovely by the fact that it was funded by Copa Airlines (the founder of my feast for the last dos dias, thank you very much!). I accomplished a few things since I last wrote, and I shall now share them with you in list form.

1. I ate a legitimate dinner in Peru.

This may seem like nothing, and in all reality, I suppose it is, but I have been very wary of eating food during my initial days here after having read scary warnings in my Eyewitness Guide to Peru. The menu at the restaurant actually consisted of only two "meals," each of which included an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. (For all you Spanish learners out there, that would be a plato de entrada, un plato de fondo, y un postre). I went for the first of the two options, mainly because my interest was immediately drawn to pescado a la vasca (grilled fish). Honestly, I didn't even take note of the first course when I ordered, so my eyes widened a bit when the waitress brought me a creamy-ish looking pasta salad with some chopped potatoes and some sort of chopped pink item that was causing the creamy stuff to turn pink. I decided that it wouldn't be very cosmopolitan of me to opt out of my very first Peruvian dish, so I endured several bites of the stuff, but it was just about equivalent to the mayo-ridden pasta salad I've had in the US--just not my cuppa tea. The fish dish, however, was quite delicious. It was served with a little mound of rice and some carrots and green beans, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also drank a large bottle of water in its entirety because my dear doctor friend Mary O'Brien told me that I need to drink lots of water to combat the approaching altitude. And if Mary says it, I do it, even if I will be peeing for the remainder of my existence. :-) Dessert was a sliver of pear tart that was quite delicious, and had something of a flan-like quality to it. I was impressed by the perfect sizes of the portions of each component of the meal. The food as a whole really seemed designed to be just enough, and it absolutely was. I feel perfectly satisfied after that tiny sliver of pear tart, even though I could pretty easily down a big ol' piece of apple pie with ice cream at home in the Jerz. Maybe I'll come home looking like delgadito...though perhaps with a few extra curves intact so as to avoid looking the prepubescent boy. :-)

2. I made a friend!

After dinner, I decided to stop at the bar to get a bottle of water to have in my room. Not only do I need to drink more agua to obey Dr. O'Brien's orders, but I also need to brush my teeth, and I don't know that tap water is okay for such activities. I've decided that it's not yet a risk worth taking. Anyway, I stopped by the bar to get a bottle of water, and as I'm waiting for it to arrive, this older-ish gentleman asks me if this is my first time in Peru. (Gosh golly gee, is it really so obvious?!). We ended up chatting en espanol for a while, and I learned that he lived in MD (just outside D.C.) for a little while, and also in Cusco for a year. He's been to lots of other countries too, mostly as a result of his service as a marine for the Peruvian navy. He practiced a little English with me too, which I found adorably sweet. So nice of him to make himself vulnerable so that I feel a bit better about my Spanish mediocrity. He was also very complimentary of my language skills, which was both flattering and a necessary confidence builder to start off my three months here. It's already proven both harder and easier than I expected to get back into the Spanish-speaking habit. Harder because there's so much I forget, but easier because thinking and speaking in Spanish is already coming more naturally than doing so in English. Pretty soon, I'm going to have a blog rife with grammatical errors. (Ha, as if. Those of you who know me well know that I will not allow such horror to take place!). Anyway, my gentleman friend, whose name I don't know, had a very welcoming manner about him, and we discussed our shared passion for traveling and discovering what makes a people unique but also what unites us across cultures and borders. If he is any indicator of the sort of people I'll be meeting in Peru, then I will be blessed with many wonderful new acquaintances!

3. Mindfulness Exercise

So I'm reading this slightly nerdy but mostly super awesome book. It's called The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, and I brought it along with me to dinner to enjoy in my solitude. I kind of hate to even share the title of the book with people because it sounds so selfish, but it actually illustrates the very important practice of showing ourselves the same compassion that we show to others. If anything, it's given me new appreciation for what it means to have compassion because I know where the word comes from. "Com" is derived from the Latin for "with," and "passion" means "suffering," so to have compassion for someone is to "suffer with" him or her. Take that a step further to SELF compassion and we're learning to "suffer with" ourselves...to offer ourselves the same mental comfort and care that we do to our peers when they struggle. Having self-compassion is a struggle for me at times because it seems to be in direct opposition to the idea of selflessness and putting others first. The more I read, though, the more it seems to me that caring for myself and having a healthier mentality about my circumstances will only help me to be more vigilant and understanding in my caring for others. I'm still in the early chapters of the book, but the section I read during dinner was focused on mindful breathing. It was interesting to read because I was actually able to put it into practice in that very moment, and to focus on the sensation of breathing even as I read and ate my meal. Even though it seems simple and thoughtless, by being thoughtFUL about it, I became able to release some of the anxiety I was feeling regarding my presence in a foreign country and the fear of being sick or homesick...maybe I'm rambling here, but I think this whole self-compassion thing is worth thinking about. Since I last blogged, I already feel a little bit more at peace.

So three unspoken goals met. And speaking of goals, prepare for my next entry sometime soon, in which I will outline my preliminary goals for the next three months. Some of them will be much more legitimate than others, but I plan on actively seeking to achieve all of them. Watch OUT, Peru!