Pig, Pug and Friends

Hi Friends!
I am still coughing a little bit - but a lot more than mom would like me to cough. Anyway, if the cough doesn't go away by tomorrow she is going to call my vet just to check if it takes that long for the medicines to work. Since I have been spending a lot of time at home resting in bed I found some old pictures to share with you.

My mom has a few scrapbooks. She hasn't worked on them in a while... but she is thinking of doing it again soon. Here is a picture of mom, aunty and my 3 cousins in Sawgrass Mall. The baby is now 5 years old so you get the idea of how old this picture is.

When mom was younger, she went to the Agrarian University in Peru. During the course of her studies she went to a lot of field trips; some as part of a course and some just for fun.

This is the most dangerous trip mom has ever made. She was 20 years old and during a mid-term vacation she decided to join a group of friends that were going to the Zarate Forest. Mom was told that you have to take a bus, then a train and then hike for 3 hours. Do you see the forest? No, right? Mom had to hike through this mountains upwards for 12 hours to finally see the "forest" which is just a small area of the mountain with a few trees, a huge rock and some bones spread out on the tiny plain area where you can camp. Why were there bones, you ask? No idea. Somebody said something about that place being a pre-incan cemetery. A little further there was a small waterfall and there was a town somewhere - maybe 5 more hours away? - because this is actually how the locals of that town bring their cattle to the city. This picture was taken on their way back down. Mom couldn't move for quite sometime because she was scared to death to cross that little portion of the way that is about 80 degrees inclined in relation to a regular walk. Oh, I forgot to mention... you never get to see what's in the bottom of the abyss.


This is a much sweeter picture, despite the fact that my mother looks very ugly with that haircut. You see, mom's hair has always been long but when aunty was going to get married mom cut it short. She can't recall why she was so mad and why she wanted aunty's pictures to look ugly with mom looking ugly... *sigh* ... teenagers! Did I mention mom was 20 already? She was visiting Huaraz with her niece (her cousin's daughter) who happens to be older than mom.

Here is mom with a couple of friends from college. They were visiting a livestock fair in Cerro de Pasco, one of the highest towns in the mountains of Peru. It was cold, can you tell?

The next picture is dedicated to Vikki and Kelly: Mom is posing with some of her best friends. They had so much fun together!

About a year later mom had to work on a project for a class. You basically choose a classmate - in this case mom chose her best friend, the one that mom visited in Charlotte in April - and have to take care of a cow and her baby before it is born until a week after it is weaned from his mother.

The cows that are pregnant are assigned to the students randomly. It turns out that there was a livestock fair going on right about the time mom's cow was going to have the baby. And by coincidence that same cow was that year's national champion in milk production. The cow provides milk to the baby during the first 48 hours - after that the cow is milked mechanically and a portion of the milk is provided to the baby on a bottle. That meant that mom and her friend had milk the cow approximately 23 hours per day to make sure that they took all the milk out so the cow wouldn't get any mammary infections and since the cow was at the fair grounds that had to be made by hand. Mom is tiny and her friend is tinier. None of them is strong at all. Imagine their pain.

Mom worked for a while in the porcine maternity of the university. She says she helped a lot of pugs come to this world. Those pugs were cute but most of them were pink. That is weird. Anyway, this pictures are not from the university's farm but from a private one mom visited twice.

When mom graduated she never worked on the field. She loves animals and loves to take care of them and because of that she could not look forward to find a job where those animals would become a "product". Yeah, I said she had already graduated - after 5 1/2 years of study. A little too late to change her major.

The next pictures are in a mini zoo that used to be very close to mom's home in Lima. It was actually located inside the school (kindergarten through highschool occupy same location in Peru) right between the classrooms where aunty's husband had studied before. There were bears, tigers, ostriches, turtles, monkeys, exotic parrots and tucans, deers, alpacas, llamas, etc. Mom's favorite was the vicuña. She had the softest hair mom has ever touched, and beautiful big eyes. Grandma told mom that the zoo closed but of course, the school is still there.

I hope you enjoyed meeting some of mom's previous friends. She had horses when she was younger but she can't find any pictures yet.

Oh, before I forget... Happy fourth of July!