Feliz Halloween

On Halloween day I had no idea what I costume I was going to wear. Rob (my bar manager and now good friend/partner in crime) and I knew we wanted go in together on some kind of team costume but were having a difficult time deciding as the stone age costumes in storage in the back of our bar were designed for people half our size (Rob and I are the same height and nearly the same weight) and we weren't sure if we could pull off the whole toga costume thing as a Greek god and goddess because the bed sheets were a bit skimpy. At 7:15pm when we realized that we could make due with the twin-size sheets from the hostel, I ran to a store with ribbon and fabric that I noticed a week ago when I was sending out some postcards with crossed fingers hoping that they sold some kind of rope that I could fashion into a tie for my Greek goddess look. Success! I bought gold rope to tie around our waists- 3 meters for 12 Soles. I power walked back to the hostel so I could then run to the park across the street to tear some vines from a tree so that Rob and I could complete our look with a fashionable crown of leaves. We finished putting our costumes together in a jiffy and I strolled into the bar at 8:30 to begin setting up plastic shot glasses in which to hand out free shots of strawberry daiquiri I had prepared earlier in the kitchen- we called them 'blood shots'. To sum things up: Halloween in the bar was absolutely insane. Because everyone planned on a big night out and brought their hundreds and fifties for big spending, we had some technical difficulties with having enough change which caused a little bit of stress and frustration in the beginning but eventually there was nothing we could do about it. It also didn't help that the owner of the hostel feels he can do whatever he wants and likes to stand behind the bar flirting with girls and was in our way, demanding shots from us when we were clearly serving the other 7482 people getting drunk in our bar. To top things off, after a disgusting cleaning session of collecting the hundreds of empty beer bottles and cocktail glasses until nearly 3am, 7 of us (including the 2 main bar staff) headed to Toro Bar for the after party with the rest of the hostel. We arrived at the disco at 3:20am only to be denied entrance by an obese Peruvian bouncer with an obvious power trip claiming that they don't let anyone in after 3am like he was a broken record. When Jimmy, the 6 ft 6 English man told the bouncer that we were with Tamir, the owner of The Point Hostels, Mr. Bouncer's mind changed and he passed the buck to another obese bouncer to go fetch Tamir. Well Tamir was more than slightly intoxicated and couldn't manage making his way to the door to let us in. We were officially SOL and headed to a different bar. Wahios bar was starting to slowly empty as we headed in for a few beers. At this point we were 5 people determined to carry on with the Halloween celebrations. We talked and laughed for about an hour and half until we decided to head to Walters- a bar/restaurant open 24 hours. We sat down in this busy restaurant where al the drunkards were ordering made-to-order sandwiches. We were back to 7 people in our group which then turned into 8 when Javier, the 1.95 meter  Peruvian man who didn't speak a word of English could have passed for a professional basketball player but really was a bouncer at a disco sat down with us. He chatted with Alexander who was sitting across from me. What's funny is that Alexander is English, married to an Irish woman, lives in Italy and had a complex and detailed conversation speaking in Italian with Javier who was responding in Spanish. They completely made it work! By 7am at Walters I realized I needed to work at 8am! You're probably thinking, 'but wait, Lauren, you work in a bar. Why would it open at 8am?' To answer your question, I was approached one week ago by the owner of the restaurant establishment in our hostel inquiring whether I would be interested/available to cover some shifts in the restaurant as the chef. Well he obviously had never met me before so of course I said yes! Freddy is one of the chef's in the restaurant. He's Peruvian, my height, down to earth, a really good chef, has years of bartending experience, and super nice. Except he got a bartending job with Costa Cruise Line and starts work 2 weeks before Christmas so he wasn't able to give the restaurant owner much notice. He started training on October 31st and wasn't even able to attend our Halloween bash in the bar! To come back full circle: It was 7am at Walters and because I was covering a shift in the kitchen I had to start working at 8am until 3pm- oy vey. I knew I was not going to go to sleep and as a result started making myself mugs of instant coffee to keep myself from feeling too sleepy. Rob even pointed out that with the big party the night before, barely anyone would be up to ask me to cook them breakfast. Boy was he wrong. On top of setting up and replenishing the free breakfast for guests which consisted of bread rolls, jam, butter, hot water, mugs, spoons, coffee, tea, sugar, and milk, I had a really busy morning and even got a bit overwhelmed with having to multitask- something that rarely happens to me in the kitchen! At one point I had an order for eggs and bacon, a banana smoothie, a cheese omelette, another banana smoothie, a pot of rice for staff lunch, and the pot of chicken stew complete with carrots, onions, potatoes, and chicken which I thickened with flour all going at the same time. Oh and I only had 3 burners- one of which had my stew and the other my rice. I impressively got everything finished in a timely manner. Then I had a pile of dishes to wash. 3pm finally rolled around and the chef who was scheduled to work after me had not arrived yet. I was miserably exhausted at this point and just wanted to lay down in my bed. Zuazette (Zu for short) finally showed up at 3:26pm. I couldn't be mad at her because she is just so adorable. I took a shower and crawled into bed. But I couldn't sleep. I kept Rob company in the bar as he was all by himself because no one was ready to drink after such a crazy party the night before. We played a few games of pool and decided to try the whole sleeping thing again. I finally got some shut eye from 6pm to midnight. Slept again from a 1am to 8am, went to the bathroom and slept some more until noon. I was not fully refreshed but felt significantly better than how I felt in the kitchen for 7.5 hours. Today Rob and I went to lay on the beach for a bit before his shift at 4pm. After an early evening shower, my friend Eric and his friend Ashley (who's a boy) came to ask me if I wanted to go for a ride in Ashley's new-to-him car! I didn't even hesitate and answered with an excited 'yup!' On Sunday Ashley bought a 1969 Peugeot so we went for a ride. It was pretty awesome. I'm working at 8:30 tonight and working the kitchen tomorrow 8am-3pm. Wish me luck!