The strangest, saddest city

It’s almost winter here and you can tell. The mostly sunny days, the days when it would even turn occasionally hot for several hours in the morning, are over. If the sun comes out at all, that is cause for celebration. The air is cool and grayness is settling in.

Herman Melville called Lima “the strangest, saddest city” and on the colder gray days, I can understand why. The garúa blowing in, the gloominess, the chill in the air, not seeing the ocean when we are staring directly at it, all take their toll. It’s easier to feel low on these days and think about what I miss about home. 

Staring at the ocean... compare it with an identical photo with the sun out.

While I love living here and would stay much longer if it were possible, what I think about most are friends. I am really looking forward to being close to people we love and who love us back. I value this time with Sam and Simon, our daily adventures, doing nearly everything, including work, as a family. But going for a year without friends to hang out with has been hard at times.

Just like at home, La Leche has been a lifesaver in connecting me with several other moms, adding in some social interactions on a monthly basis and establishing a couple of friendly relationships.

And we have a lot of casual conversations at parks with other parents, which can be nice. But few people seem interested in actually getting together. Perhaps that is a casualty of living in another country: you get tired of meeting other people who are here for a limited engagement and therefore you decide not to invest any time or energy in them. I get that.

In Ann Patchett's most recent novel says, “Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.” That quote has stayed in my mind all year, as I struggle with Spanish, parenting, feeling friendless, and missing various comforts of home. What I've been looking for was fluency in Spanish, not necessarily friends. I have certainly found my journey with Spanish interesting and compelling, enough to keep me fixated for a long time on continuing to learn it. We have found interesting work, Simon is enraptured with his two favorite playmates, and we have become explorers throughout all parts of Lima. I love our opportunities here. All of these are certainly gifts. And yet, still these strangest, saddest days come and go.

A Peruvian Christmas

Christmas was obviously different for us this year; no Schumacher/Hess or Carpenter family gatherings, no truffle-making madness over the last few weeks, no cold and dark nights. 

Christmas Eve day seemed like any other day; everyone was still at work (even though it was a Saturday and Christmas Eve!) so Simon and I stopped at our favorite construction sites and watched cement trucks, a backhoe, and the giant buckets moving up and down on a pulley system. This is a favorite pastime – checking out construction sites – and we never have to go very far to find one!


Peruvians celebrate Christmas late on Christmas Eve, with presents and dinner at midnight, accompanied by lots of fireworks. We were excited to be invited to Christmas Eve dinner at Yannina’s home, thankfully at a more reasonable hour (for us) of 7:30. It was as if Manos Amigas had simply changed the location of its daily activities, as everyone we see on a daily basis (with the addition of Yannina and Roberto’s mom, Angelica) was there for dinner.


Dieuwe and Giuseppe have an annual tradition of putting on a little skit featuring their Santa Claus-clad teddy bears, and this year they had a special part for Simon: the tiny elf helping Papa Noel. We thought this was hilarious and taped it while all the other adults were off doing adult things like putting food on the table.

Getting ready for their annual Papa Noel skit, this time with a special guest, the little elf

Is this not hilarious? I love Simon and Giuseppe's hats! 

We ate dinner, we opened presents, and we set off fireworks. Simon was bouncing off of the walls, a combination of a late night, lots of exciting toys, and two giant glasses of chicha morada, the purple corn drink.


We were home by 10:30, only to be awakened at midnight by many earth-shattering rounds of fireworks. Somehow Simon slept through all of that, thankfully!


Christmas morning we walked down the coast via our park network (past all the used firecrackers!) on the malecón to find a group of friends-of-friends for a Christmas brunch picnic. It was an interesting contrast to the night before. There was champagne, fruit, sticky buns, and lots of toddlers. 


Sam started blowing bubbles for Simon to chase and was instantly surrounded by kids; he looked like the Pied Piper of Peru!

Look at the zeal on Simon's face! What a delight.

It was interesting to compare notes with Sam on our walk back home: people generally either work for an embassy or in mining. Occasionally I’ve met an expat who is a teacher, or works for the World Bank, or is a fruit exporter. But generally those people (and we) are outliers. It’s a completely different circle of people than we’d meet in the States. Many different nationalities, several different professions; our only real commonality is that none of us is Peruvian!


We are thankful to have opportunities to meet friends and experience a holiday in another culture, even though we miss our friends and families. Merry Christmas!

Poco a Poco

Warning – although I had mentioned that I’ll try not to have super-wordy posts, I reserve the right to have lengthy ones at times… and this is one of them! Hopefully I’ll include enough pictures here to break up the wordiness. (A side note about the pictures: Blogger is driving me crazy because I can't place them correctly without throwing off the text somehow - anyone who has tips to share, please do!)

Here we are at the end of another week, and poco a poco things are feeling more familiar. I see some of the same families at the park each time Simon and I go out. We’ve been piecing together different parts of our neighborhood and finding new ways to get places. Certain things don’t seem so strange anymore. 


Time has started speeding up again; it had slowed to a tiny crawl there for a couple of weeks when I wondered each morning how we would possibly make it through the next 18 hours or so. It’s one thing to have a lot of time on your hands and no place to be as a single person or as a couple. There are cafes to sit in, journals to write in, books to read. But with a toddler, a lot of our energy has been split between going to our classes & exploring Lima with going to parks and finding ways for Simon to play and run around. The house where we’re staying has an elderly dog, Argos, who Simon is simultaneously in love with and terrified of. Simon has also enjoyed playing with a fire truck that the señora has loaned him. It’s fun to watch his delight in riding it as well as his elation when he actually pets Argos. 

Simon is mimicking all the sirens he hears and is experimenting with different ways to use his vocal chords. He picks things up so quickly right now. Everything, such as: saying “chao” and “bien” (not super clearly, but about as clearly as he says other words), mimicking the hand motions of the señora and her son, climbing the ladder at the park, handling a very full glass of yogurt and drinking it carefully… I am consistently wowed by him. 

Each week our schedules have changed a bit as the school figures out which teachers are available when, and matches that with our one requirement that we cannot be in class at the same time (since one of us must be able to be with Simon). My class has stayed pretty constant, with the same teacher and fellow student as the first week. Sam’s gone from private classes to a group class back to private classes, with a new teacher almost every week, and a different class time every single week. It’s a good way to prepare us for constant change, no? I’m impressed with Sam and his tenacity at learning Spanish. He started studying in earnest at the beginning of this year, and has improved rapidly since we’ve gotten here. He starts up conversations with our housemates here, never mind if he has the grammar or vocabulary right. I admire his attitude and am trying to copy it more. I’m the one who obsesses over getting everything right. Ah, whatever. I’ve been able to realize that I am learning, improving, and I have ten more months to work at it full-time. How excellent! 

Earlier this week, I was seriously considering taking a break from Spanish classes. The biggest reasons I could come up with to not do this were: I need to keep learning Spanish and it provides some structure to my day. But my two-hour class was grammar, grammar, grammar, with the same tired examples thrown in. As in, we’d learn a new structure and then Julie and I would both be asked to provide examples. It was fun to be practicing the subjunctive and getting a better handle on when/how to use it, but our imaginations were limited and so we’d provide similar examples for everything. “If you won the lottery, what would you do?” “If I won the lottery, I’d travel around the world.”

Mexico is my comparison country, as it’s the only other country I’ve really traveled in as an adult; I’ve traveled there half a dozen times over the last 15 years, with stays ranging from two weeks to almost four months. I took Spanish classes for a month in the beautiful city of Guanajuato and loved the mix of grammar and conversation classes with topical classes such as Mexican history, literature, economics, and muralism. I was working on my Spanish at the same time that I was inspired by different, quirky facets of beauty in Mexico’s culture.

So I was a bit tired of grammar-only classes. I wanted more of Peruvian culture mixed in with it. Luckily, the day that I was ready to quit and go find another language school for next week, we ditched the grammar and had an incredible conversation about poverty in Lima vs. the U.S. While I am very much just beginning to learn about the rampant poverty here, it was fascinating to hear my teacher’s views and that of the other student. We joked about getting back together in six months to compare our reactions and solutions then… and while it was said laughingly, I do wish we could have that conversation.

The next day we had a similarly intense conversation about Steve Jobs, his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, and our goals and priorities in life. The following day was full of how to figure out when we are getting ripped off because we aren’t Peruvian and possible responses (“Look, if I were Peruvian, you wouldn’t charge me extra. Tell me the right price and I’ll pay it!” While I’m nowhere near having that flow off of my tongue, especially in an argument, it was great to practice.). Our teacher did an excellent job of integrating all that grammar practice in the context of each of those very real conversations. This is the class I wanted. So I left the week excited for one more week of conversation between the three of us.

I’ve been keenly missing my La Leche group in Indianapolis; this amazing group of women is one reason why my transition from being a way-over-full-time nonprofit fundraiser and manager to being a full-time mom went so easily. I found so many impressive examples of mothering and several good friends there, and nearly every week Simon and I had some sort of La Leche gathering, including a playgroup I started as a way to help more moms like me connect in between meetings. While there is a La Leche chapter here in our neighborhood, it meets just once a month, and occurred the day before we arrived in Lima. So while I know that it’s just a matter of time before our lives begin to include friends, busy-ness, and volunteering, I’ve been missing having friends for myself and familiar playmates for Simon. He plays well with the other toddlers at the parks, but he is really eyeing their cool toys and makes a go for them as soon as he has a chance. 

We have one more week of classes and the homestay, followed by a week off. Then we move into our apartment across the street from Manos Amigos and begin volunteering with them. We are really looking forward to that! While living at the house has been fine at times and excruciating at others, it has definitely helped me look forward to the next stage of living here, even though there are some things I’ve been worrying about (of course!). Once we have a little more distance between us and our current living situation, I’ll write about it and more of the humor will come through. For now, here’s to one more week of classes, meandering around our neighborhood, and yummy food!