Weekend Fun

Last Saturday night, we got our first taste of what “going out on the weekend” is like in our town. Early in the day we met up for lunch with a few teenage girls who have befriended Milene since we’ve arrived here. At lunch they asked us if we wanted to hang out together at night and have some fun. We said yes and agreed to meet at the Plaza around 10. Now, although Milene and I are usually in the habit of going to sleep around 10 or 11 in this quiet town, we thought we’d venture out past our bed time to see what the weekend bustle might be like. Sure enough, as we walked from our house down by the laguna banks up the hill to the central Plaza, we saw a more-than-usual number of people out and about. Things were looking up. It was exciting to see this unusual amount activity in a town with no movie theaters, no bowling alleys, no bars, no late-night stores, and no 24-hour Walmart. Milene and I wondered what our friends had in mind for the get-together.

As we neared the Plaza we saw our friends waiting on one of the benches. They waved eagerly and stood up to greet us. We gave our greetings with a traditional Peruvian kiss on the cheek and sat down on the bench to talk. They asked us many questions and we talked about a variety of things until it came to the point that we thought we might ask our friends if there was something fun they wanted to do together. After all it was a weekend night, and it seemed like there might be a town party somewhere or maybe a soccer game. In any case, we were in the habit of following along and just observing what life was like for people in the town. So it seemed like a great idea when our friends suggested we stroll around the Plaza for a little bit.

Well, as it turns out, strolling around the Plaza is actually the main attraction for weekend fun—for everyone. After making numerous circuitous trips around the Plaza ourselves, we decided to sit down again on one of the benches, all the meanwhile just talking with our friends about this and that. As we continued chatting and sitting, we observed the same groups of friends and couples passing us by on the same well-known ‘Plaza circuit’ as many as 10 or 15 times. People just seemed to be enjoying themselves, doing nothing more than talking and strolling along the same path surrounding the Plaza over and over. We even saw a few of the town cars making the same stroll, but adding a little spice to the evening mix by playing music as they slowly (and I mean very slowly) cruised around the Plaza. Just as we sat on the bench, the cars too interspersed their circuit trips with the occasional stop-and-chill on the side of the road.

As this went on for several hours, Milene and I realized that there really was nothing more to it. This is what people do for fun on the weekends here. They just stroll and talk. Young and old alike do it and everyone doesn’t seem notice that the iPods, the movies, the bars, the video games, every piece of high-tech entertainment, it’s all missing. It’s just not part of their culture of having fun at night and it is so very novel to us. Milene and I laughed in pleasant surprise the whole way home that night, both realizing how tame our ‘going out’ had been. And yet it was nice. It was very nice. When was the last time we spent a few hours on a weekend evening just talking with friends and relaxing? No TV, no cell phones, no technology; just talking and walking? Neither of us could remember. But we both agreed that it is something we’d like to get used to doing here. Just talking and walking. Talking and walking.