All You Have to do is ASK.

I have two stories to share today. For some reason, some lessons are harder to learn than others, but they're pretty funny to learn in the process. If you know me at all you know I don't like to ask for things. I like to figure things out for myself. But sometimes, you just have to ask. I learned this the hard way.

1. LAUNDRY.

The first night I was here my mom (mami) was showing me around the house. She started to show me where the laundry was and how to use the machine when she got a phone call from my sister requesting that we meet the rest of the family downtown. "Mañana," she said. "Mañana voy a mostrarte" (tomorrow I will show you). Well tomorrow came and went and she never showed me. For two weeks I had plenty of clothes. Then the selection was growing slim. The beginning of my third week here mami changed my sheets on my bed while I was at school. I thought for sure she would have noticed my overflowing dirty clothes bin in my room when she changed my sheets and say something about it to me. So i waited and waited and waited. Then one night I washed some essentials in my bathtub with body wash - desperate times call for desperate measures. The next day my friend Arianna brought me some shirts and other essentials to school. With her help I was clothes for another week. 31 days had gone by and I had yet to do laundry. How many clothes do these people think I brought? I only came with two suitcases... So my assumption that mami would notice I had no clothes or remember that she had never shown me how to wash them was clearly wrong. Yesterday I finally worked up the nerve to walk into the kitchen and quite timidly say "perdon. Puedes mostrarme como usar la maquina para lavar mi ropa hoy dia?" (excuse me. Could you should me how to use the washing machine today?) Her response?: "Por supuesto! Solo que necesitas hacer es preguntarme!" (of course! All you had to do was ask.) Of course! Why didn't I think of that 2 weeks ago? So now I know how to use the machine and I have clean clothes. Lesson learned? Don't wait 4 weeks to ask a simple question.

2. WAWA.

Wawa is quechua for 'baby'. There is a special bread called wawa that tastes like cinnamon raison bread (but without any visible sign of cinnamon or raisons...) and is apparently a Peruvian specialty. The bread is often times baked in the shape of a baby (mildly creepy) and some come with a little porcelain baby head on the top of the bread. So last night we had wawa for the first time. I wrongly assumed that the little porcelain baby head attached to the bread was a sugar ornamentation. I ate it. Yep. I ate porcelain. The second I bit into it I knew it wasn't sugar but I didn't know what it was and I didn't realize the rest of my family didn't eat their little baby heads until Mami collected everyone's baby heads to keep (also creepy). I was too embarrassed to admit that I ate the head so I looked around my place setting and then said "no sé que pasó!" (I don't know what happened!) which wasn't entirely a lie. Lesson learned?: Never assume. You just might end up eating porcelain.