Bingo in the Plaza

Hey friends- Sorry I haven't written in awhile. Here is an older post about Friday night Bingo that I wrote last week and forgot to post for you. Busy times these days. Fewer blog posts and even fewer patience to try to upload pictures with my ever decreasing internet access...  

Yesterday I was one G53 and one I16 away from winning a sack of rice. Damn. So close. It was Bingo day in Ascope and I thought I'd be lucky this time. 

Every few months we have town Bingo in the Plaza de Armas (town center) in attempts of raising money to repair the town's cathedral which has a big ugly bald spot on one of its giant domes. Piere loves Bingo. When a Bingo day is coming up, our whole house hears about it for days in advance. 

A couple weeks ago on a lazy Saturday, we were supposed to have Bingo. The whole town was talking about it. Little Man and I even practiced by playing Bingo with his home set that morning... I told you, we had a lot of downtime and days without electricity in the beginning of this month ;) But then Saturday Bingo was postponed for some reason, much to Piere's dismay. Lucky for me, it was moved to last night. 

For random circumstances, I was away from Ascope for a few days this week. When I got back yesterday afternoon, Bingo had just started. I knew Piere would be there. Instead of going home upon my arrival in Ascope, I went right to the plaza to look for him and the rest of the host family. I didn't even make it across one side of the plaza before Little Man came running towards me screaming "BREEEEEETTTT YOU'RE BACK!!!" He even followed it up with a tackle hug. So great. Immediately he instructed me to go home and get the Bingo card he had given me the first time around when Bingo got cancelled. I had given it back to him, but he saved it for me just in case I got done with my meeting yesterday on time to make it back for Bingo. Adorable. 

We didn't win, but we came close. It's just fun for me to watch the event and see everyone from town all in one place socializing and relaxed. Bingo is fun. The prizes are always similar, but always useful and desired. This time they were a bottle of cooking oil, a sack of sugar, a sack of rice, 50 soles, 100 soles, and 150 soles (around $55 USD). Oh, and when we got up to 2nd prize, 100 soles, so many people won that by the time the prize was split, the winners walked away with 9 soles each... roughly $3 USD. When that happened, Piere was like, "Ha. I didn't need that anyway." Hahaha. Gotta love Bingo day. And Piercito.