Happy Anniversary to Us!

I have been meaning to put up a little post in celebration of Marco and my wedding anniversary. We celebrate a monthly anniversary on the 12th because were married in our civil ceremony on the 12th of October 2012. Our religious wedding, however, took place a year later on the 18th of October 2013. We love having reasons to celebrate so we celebrated both weekends with a little something.

There was a wedding of a colleague of Marco's on the 11th at the same church where we were married on the villa militar. It was super nice and the same priest married them as well. When he spotted us he motioned to his belly and smiled at us. It was super cute. He was a great person to preside over our wedding. I really enjoyed his speech. Marco did the sword tunnel and we went to the reception right around the corner at the circulo militar. The reception was a blast and we danced up a storm. There was a waitress who couldn't stop smiling while watching us dance. It isn't every day that you see pregnant ladies rocking out on the dance floor and we were having a great time.

The following weekend we celebrated by going out to lunch at Kuo Wha, a delicious Chinese buffet restaurant with a beautiful garden as you enter. We stuffed ourselves and then took a nice long nap. When we got up we went out to Plaza Lima Sur to eat and see if we couldn't get massages. Unfortunately, the massage place didn't have a chair for pregnant ladies so we had to skip out on that. We did see a movie though. Dracula, the Untold Story. It was quite good.

We didn't exchange gifts or anything like that and it was so nice. Honestly, I am so happy to spend every day with this man that sometimes random days feel like anniversaries. I hope to keep it that way.

Here is to 2 years with my amazing husband and to many many many many more to come!

These kinds of photos of Marco are rare but I love them because they show how happy he is. :)

Dia Villamariano

Yesterday was my school's carnival and it was really really fun. On Friday we spent the afternoon setting up tables and chairs and making sure everyone knew what her job was. I had the pleasure of selling tickets for the Tombola which is more or less an "everybody wins" carnival attraction. Basically you buy a ticket for 5 soles and it either has a number or a letter on it with the number corresponding to a better prize. I bought two tickets with the carnival money I received from the school and I got a bottle of shampoo and a headband. Not bad. The Tombola had prizes from snickers bars to kitchenware to a playstation 4. No matter what you get something which is fun.

What I really lucked out with was the Gran Rifa. Marco bought 5 tickets and I bought 1 and out of the thousands that were purchased, one of our tickets was chosen for the dinner for 6 at a Chinese restaurant prize. How cool is that? There were some fantastic prizes including the grand prize of having a years scholarship to the school. There were a couple of Scotiabank 1,000 USD and 1,500 USD bank credits too.

Setting up by pulling legs apart.

The final outcome. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of the day of.

The idea behind the carnival day is to raise money for the school as well as charity programs. It is a Catholic school so they do a lot of work with other schools that need funds and food in the Lima area. I couldn't help but notice the onslaught of advertising done. The chairs and tables were from Coca-Cola, the stage had huge Movistar banners on it and all of the booths in the main patio were restaurants like Bembos, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, ChinaWok and D'Nofrio ice cream. I am pretty sure at my school's carnival days the food was made by parent volunteers and there were always tons of grills going. Hotdogs and hamburgers were the main food. I will say that it was nice to have some variety for lunch. Julie and I couldn't help but wonder how much more money could have been raised if more parents volunteered instead of having vendors come in. I don't know the breakdown nor do I know if the vendors give some percentage to the school.

I found some super cute stickers that could be personalized and bought them for my two nieces. Julie and I took pictures in a photo booth and I enjoyed watching all the teachers do their dance at the end. This year's theme for Teacher's Day was Disney so they extended it to make it the theme of the carnival as well since they already had all the props and costumes. Disney got plenty of free advertising this year at school. If you can't read it in the photo, the quote comes from Walt Disney: "If you can dream it, you can do it.". It's a good quote no matter who it came from.

Overall, it was a super fun day and it got me super excited about the future because I can imagine Marco and me along with Leah at an event of this nature when she is in school.

Ley Seca (Dry Law)

It's that time of year again when the toilet paper gets piled up in front of the liquor section in Metro due to dry law. Whenever there are elections, everyone is prohibited from selling liquor during the weekend of said elections.

Dry law is hilarious to me. No one is supposed to sell alcohol during the weekend of elections. Has no one learned from the United States' attempt to prohibit alcohol? (It didn't work.) Supposedly the law is in place to help ensure that people make better electoral decisions. Oh if only that were true. I am pretty sure that there was an election of some sort going on last year around the time we got married because I went to buy alcohol with my brother and sister in law and the guy at the gas station didn't want to sell us anything. After some pleading we were able to get a few beers. I know, bad us. But hey, we are foreigners so we don't vote. Bottoms up!

For anyone interest in who won the Lima mayor position it was Luis Castañeda. He implemented the Metropolitano during his last term as mayor. We will see what exciting plans he has for this term. I am intrigued.