How to celebrate Halloween like a budding ex-pat

1. Feel sorry for Prima´s 10-year old host brother who is really excited to celebrate Halloween but only has us to celebrate with.
2. Dress up even though you said you already dressed up on Saturday and won´t dress up again.
3. Throw on a beach dress and put a white camisole tank top over it. Wear flip flops. Tie your ponytail of thin, long hair at the very top of your head so your hair sticks out. Wear a hat for pictures. Put on sunglasses. Keep your headphones around your neck. Throw your pack towel (beach towel-looking) around your shoulder. Take your camera with you to use as a prop. Most importantly, apply a thick white layer of sunblock on your nose. And say you are a ¨turista americana.¨ An American Tourist.
4. Take funny pictures with your host cousin and Prima.
5. Play charades and a quick round of Pictionary.
6. Leave for Borracha´s house to play pool with the gang.
7. Drink something called ¨XXX¨ that has a picture of a girl in a thong bikini on it.
8. Dance with the 9-year olds and the PC gang congregated at Borracha´s house.
9. Tell everyone you´re not going to the discoteca with them.
10. Go home, change your mind, put a black t-shirt on, leave the other parts of the costume behind, go to the bathroom without toilet paper because your host mom decided to remove the roll from your private bathroom, grab just enough money for transportation and cover charge. Decide to leave your coat behind.
11. Figure out where the gang went to catch a combi bus by asking people on the street where the gringoes went.
12. Get there just in time to see a packed combi bus across the highway and your friend´s host sister waving you on, and run across the highway (after looking both ways) and just make it in time.
13. Realize that the ¨discoteca¨ is an outdoor space with a stage and a roof. Take your 6´7¨ friend´s long-sleeve t-shirt because you´re cold and wrongly think that there´s no way any Peruvian wants to dance with you now. Thank God for chivalry.
14. Be a wing-girl for the night. Laugh at your friend realize that all the guys hitting on her are 16.
15. Dance to salsa, merengue, reggaeton, Latin pop, ¨rock¨, and other music Peruvians like.
16. When the headliner band plays, stay right in front of the stage with your friends who each have a Peruvian dance partner. Yours is a Peruvian in the PC host family circle who has spent the night with a hula skirt (made of a plastic bag that an environment volunteer made) over his head. Embrace the fact that he just wants to dance and have fun. Be shocked when the band plays a few ska songs and watch Peruvians skank. Join in on the jumping up and down and being silly.
17. Be upset because it´s so cold you can see your breath.
18. Walk home with Borracha as the sun is starting to light up the sky behind the mountains at 5:15AM.
19. Realize your host uncle dead-bolted the door behind him when he returned home at 1AM from partying in Lima.
20. Ring the doorbell and knock on the window because you´re too damn cold to care.
21. Wake up 5 hours later and have your host family say ¨Buenas noches¨ to you in a sarcastic yet very amused manner.
22. Go to town to spend 2 hours buying chocolate, roasted peanuts, milk, dried coconut, etc. for an experimental dessert you´ll make with Prima. Find out later from your host mom that flour is not meant to be eaten raw, but again be too tired to care.
23. Take a nap.