Thinking Allowed: Canada, Australia, Turkey, Spain, Peru

Canada, Australia, Turkey, Spain, Peru. What do all these countries mean when listed in this order? 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Any closer to the answer? Yup. These are the places Aurora's has celebrated her last five birthdays. Go Aurora! And now she is 16. And we still feel lucky every day to have her as a daughter. Still the best travel companion we could ever ask for. Still the best older sister we could have imagined. Sixteen is a pretty big deal in many places. She could be driving a car all by herself right now. Except she has zero interest in driving cars or even sitting in them. Which is all for the best as we don't have a car. But we still celebrated the occasion by all getting locked in a room together and trying to escape. We had never done an escape room as a family before. And most countries probably wouldn't have let Levana participate. But we are in Peru so they shrugged their shoulders and wished us the best. We made a great family team and Aurora was pretty happy to have to break out of prison for her 16th birthday. She was also pretty good natured about then taking a Spanish exam. She learned big things about herself as she entered this next life stage - like that she prefers flourless chocolate cakes to floured ones and that mumbled Spanish is hard to understand on walkie talkies.

After a couple of great weeks in Cusco we were all a bit apprehensive about the shift to a big city. Cusco was very chill - we flitted from impressive ruin to impressive ruin, learned to make chocolate, tried valiantly to go through all the places Aurora found with food she wanted to try, ate a lot of potatoes, drank juice in markets, and walked up endless numbers of stairs. We lost things in Cusco - a credit card, a backpack full of rain jackets, and a sweater. We were all entertained when Tova's memory of half of the taxi drivers license plate eventually led us on a trail back to him and were reclaimed with our bag in a grand ceremony involving no less than five armed gentlemen. Though Cusco lacked the serenity of the Sacred Valley, we really liked it. Lima seemed a league of its own. But, we like it too. (What does it mean that we seem to like everything?) It's got a lot of very well kept green spaces and massive grocery stores. It has impressive cliffs with a boardwalk running along the length of them. It has an ocean. It has big city things like British councils, consulates, and medical clinics. So far it has exceeded our city expectations.