Last night was the 25th anniversary of Oscar and Marisela Galvez, the people I´m living with in Peru. We all went out for dinner and came home and had a dance party in the living room.

I´ve been trying really hard to find a wife while I´m here in South America. But it hasn´t worked very well. There are plenty of girls who are, initially, excited to meet me, but it seems to break down somewhere. It has nothing to do with our only being able to communicate like children; I think it has to do with my dancing. Latin people love to dance. They wiggle their hips all over, and I don´t know what to do. I try to dance, but I look as stupid as you would expect. One girl said to me while dancing, "Tranquilo," which basically means, "calm down."

I think I´ll try bull fighting next. Girls like that, right?

My grandmother is a very special lady. She has always advised us rotten grandkids that it´s unhealthy to eat at a late hour. Well, Grandma would love Peru. Now, since I´ve been in Peru for an entire week, I feel authorized to speak of Peruvians in grand generalizations. In Peru, they eat their biggest meal for lunch, and for dinner they eat something light, like a sandwich. I can´t remember what this meal was called but it was amazing. They have spices in Peru that I´ve never tasted before. This meal was even better than Peggy McIntyre´s cooking.

With each meal we always have fresh juice: mango, corn, banana, strawbery and banana, pineapple, orange, peach, passion fruit, and star fruit (I don´t actually know what this fruit is called in English, but it looks like a star). But do you know what would make these meals better? If I could share them with people from home. It´s funny really, of all the experiences I´ve had in other countries, those I most wish I could share with my friends and family are the meals. Each time I taste something new, especially in a foreign environment, I realize I may never have the expereince again.

The greatest part of this big lunch is afterwords you fall asleep for a while.

While I was traveling around Lima, I must have seen the Twilight cover nearly twenty times. But it didn´t say Twilight; it said Crepusculo, and everytime I saw it I thought, "Wow, I guess that mormon girl wrote a fourth Twilight book, and this new book has a weird name." I didn´t think about that fact that I was in Peru or that everything else around me was written in Spanish. Eventually it clicked, and I felt stupid. Crepusculo is Spanish for Twilight. Later I was invited to a movie, and the only one I recognized was Crepusculo. So I watched it. The film was in English with Spanish subtitles. Now..., I don´t know if it was just the familiarity of a medium in English or something else, but I liked the movie. In fact, it made me want to read the books, which is more surprising because all my high brow freinds ridiculed the books and the film. However, after seeing those dishy diamondy vampires, I wish for my milky pale skin again instead of this blotchy lobster red that looks like leprosy.

The sun is really hot. It will burn you. Even though it´s really far away, it will still burn you. And maybe you didn´t know this, but, the closer you get to the equator, the closer you get to the sun. So if you´re white like milk, and near the equator you will get burned. It doesn´t matter how much your mother has you worried about skin cancer, or that you just discussed the matter with a doctor. It doesn´t matter that you´ve put on expensive sun block that the nurse sold you. It doesn´t matter that the wind is blowing and you don´t feel the sun. It doesn´t matter how attractive your body is (this was a bitter pill to swallow).The sun will burn you like gasoline burnes turtles, if of course the turtles are lit on fire.

I'm Dallas Dean. This photo doesn't show you what a happy person I am, so you'll just have to trust me.