04/10 I really want to like it here but it’s a hard place to be gringo. I’m the only one and not many make it here to begin with. This is by far the biggest tourist town that isn’t. All the usual, “OMG! It’s a foreigner!!!” things take place; it’s just a lot more common.
Here’s what it’s like walking down the street… there’s the constant staring to begin with. Pretty sure that will always annoy me. Little kids call out gringo, which almost never happens in a town, but it’s cute so when it happened a few times it didn’t phase me. When someone over 8 says it, not so cute. That only happened a couple times. They weren’t being mean about it but when you’re over 8 you should be able to form a sentence like, “Hey, welcome to Huancabamba” or just, “Hi!”. And of course whenever I walk by a group of people (adults) I can hear them talking about me as soon as I pass. That’s pretty irritating. Girls just stop whatever they are doing and giggle. Sometimes I’ll get a marriage proposal out of it. Girls are crazy so whatever.
These kind of things can grate on your nerves so today I sat inside hiding until hunger drove me out. Even then I had to take a deep breath before leaving the hotel. It was as expected but that’s life I suppose. I’ll tell you what though… if I’m back in the States and I see a foreign tourist, I’m just going to go up to them and hug them. 
I didn’t bother finding a place to do my laundry and just ended up doing it in the sink. My bike shorts have a huge tear in the seat so tomorrow I’ll stay here and find a place that can fix them. The presidential election was today and in case there are riots or something it might be better to be inside. Just kidding. I have to figure out which direction I want to take when I leave too.
Update: the bike shorts need a bit more work than I thought. Looks like a patch is needed for the entire seat area. Can’t wait to see how they turn out. The guy said I should just buy new ones. Wednesday I’m out of here. The plan is to take HWY 2 (unpaved) to Jaen. I’ve been spending a lot more time outside and it hasn’t been as bad today (Monday). Maybe the weekend red-eye syndrome was in effect (all the guys drink and subsequently become more obnoxious on the weekends–they also get red-eye from whatever it is they are drinking/smoking/chewing).
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