¡Porque Perú!

One night, when we were living with the señora, one of our housemates mentioned that she couldn't buy a Metropolitano bus pass at a certain station. Unsure whether she meant that a dispensing machine was broken or if that particular station just didn't sell passes, period, I asked why: "¿Por qué?" Before our housemate could answer, the señora interrupted. "¿Por qué?" She sniffed. "¡Porque Perú!"


Why? Because it's Peru!


It became a joke, one that Sam and I would tell each other on occasions when we thought something was funny or strange. Why was the señora so particular with us? ¡Porque Perú! I had to go to the doctor and called up Christina's clinic, which has multiple locations. When I asked how much it would cost, the voice on the other end asked which office I planned to visit. "Why?" I asked. "Because the price is different depending on which clinic you go to," she said. "It's 70 soles in Chorrillos or downtown Lima, 100 soles in San Borja, and 120 soles in San Isidro." ¡Porque Perú! The postal carrier delivered a package from my mom, but when I asked where her other boxes were, he asked me for a special tip, told me of course it was not necessary, but that it might help the rest of the packages arrive. ¿Por qué? ¡Porque Perú!


And then it passed from our daily usage and I forgot about it, until last weekend. We had decided to go to a free concert we'd read about in the newspaper, one that sounded like it would be Spanish-style flamenco guitar music. Sign us up!


The concert was to take place in a museum located in a new (to us) Lima neighborhood, so we went early to explore. There was a lovely little plaza in front of the museum, complete with a beautiful photo exhibit, so we played with Simon and looked at the art.


We still had an hour to kill, however, so after awhile, we started to leave and explore side streets. Then I noticed perhaps a dozen people lining up for the concert. A line forms an hour ahead of time for guitar music? It seemed excessive but I got in line too while Sam and Simon continued romping around.


A guard came out after 20 minutes or so and told the line of people, now over 100 strong, that the invited guests were welcome to enter through a different door. "What about those of us who were invited by the newspaper?" called out the woman in front of me. "Where do we go?" The guard smiled faintly and said the doors would open soon.


"When are the doors supposed to open?" I asked her. "Hmpf," she said. "This is Perú. They were supposed to open a half hour ago. If we're lucky they'll open by the time the concert starts."


We eventually got in and were surprised that the auditorium was so small and already so packed with people. Our plan - to sit in the back, on the aisle, in case we needed to make an early exit, but leave at intermission regardless - was foiled when we ended up in seats as far away from the exit as possible. Okay, that's fine, I told myself. Don't panic. Simon will be OK for half the concert. We just need to make it to intermission.


The guy in front of us had a program. "Can I see that?" I asked. "Or, could you tell me when the intermission will be?" He offered me the program but rolled his eyes: "Don't trust it. There is an intermission listed, but this is Perú. You can't trust what they tell you."


After a lengthy wait during which I worried incessantly about how Simon might behave during a concert where one is supposed to be quiet, and berated myself for thinking that a concert near his bedtime was a good idea, a woman stepped up to address the packed house. "We are sorry for the delay. There are over 100 people waiting outside to get in and we are trying to convince them to leave. We will begin in five minutes."


A half hour later, after four loooooong introductory speeches by various important people, the musicians entered. After tuning their instruments, the harpsichordist abruptly stood up and said, "No flash cameras, please; it will damage the paintings." She started to sit back down, then straightened up again. "And there will be no intermission."


Arrggghhhh! ¿Por qué? ¡Porque Perú!


Simon was mesmerized for six pieces, tranquil for three, and ready to go for one. We snuck out, jostling about every person possible between our boy and our backpack, ready to make our way home. "Wait," said a guard. "You can't go back out that way." He started walking with us. "There are still people waiting outside and if you leave from that door, they will want to come in." He took us deep into the bowels of the museum and we exited through a guard shack onto a dark side street. How sneaky!


We walked around to the front of the building and saw perhaps a dozen hardcore devotees waiting at the door. I have a pretty good idea of what they were saying to each other.

Peruvian bureaucracy is alive and well

Several weeks ago, my mom sent us a package. It was partly a care package and partly items that I had planned to bring (such as my favorite gluten free flour mix) but couldn’t fit in our luggage. After she went through some trouble to send it, she mentioned it should arrive in 6-10 days. That is, if it made it through the customs process. When she was packing it at the post office, she was given a list of forbidden items. She read it over and discovered that she wasn’t allowed to send food. Hmmm. She decided to chance it and send it anyway. Our waiting and salivating began… we were dreaming about the chocolate chip cookies we would make and the coffee we would drink after the package arrived.

 

Finally, a week and a half later, our upstairs neighbor Christina (who is also the office coordinator at Manos Amigas) knocked on our door. She handed us a document and said, "You've been sent a package, but the post office has decided to retain it."

She told us that you could either pay some money and fax your passport to the post office people, and they might deliver it, or you went in person to the post office and they most likely would give it to you.

Packages could be retained at different post offices, and ours somehow had been retained at the one farthest away from our neighborhood. It might take a couple of hours to get there, depending on the mode of transport used. A taxi would be quicker but would be pretty expensive. A bus that passes on our street might go there; she could check with the girls who work at Manos Amigas. They would know.

I should mention that at the time we had this conversation with Christina, I had yet to do two basic things: hail a taxi on the street and get on a regular city bus. We had heard countless stories (both while we were in the States as well as after arriving here) about the crime level in Lima and how dangerous taxis were in particular. One story that stuck in my head is about how the back seat doors are sometimes childproofed and so once you got in, you couldn’t get out until you were let out, after you’d been robbed and perhaps assaulted.

So, I was a little scared about hailing a taxi off the street. The señora had advised us to only take taxis that we’d called in advance, and for the limited number of times that we’d needed a taxi so far, that is what we’d done. (Except for the memorable time that she called a taxi for us going one way – it was 11 soles – and when I called to arrange the ride home, they told me it would cost 45 soles. “But I paid 11 soles this morning for the same ride!” I told the dispatcher. “There is a tariff on taxi rides from the oceanfront on Sunday afternoons,” she told me. Yeah, right. We took a very long walk back instead. And after the señora heard about that, she called up the taxi company and let them have it. It was nice to hear her sticking up for us. Actually, she was sticking up for tourists in Lima everywhere: “You think you’re going to get away with charging someone an exorbitant fee just because they have an accent? Why do you think people don’t come back to Lima? It’s because of you!”)

While we’d taken the Metropolitano bus, which runs on a dedicated street lane on a very specific route and was therefore easy to find and use, I hadn’t hailed a regular city bus yet. Buses don’t exactly have names or schedules. You flag one down and ask if it goes where you’re going. Everywhere I’d needed to go so far, I either walked or took the Metropolitano.

Back to the package dilemma. Christina said since the post office was so far away, perhaps it would be better to just go through the electronic process and hope that the post office would deliver it. But then she added that she had really pissed off the post office folks the last time she contested a retained package, so if she were the person emailing in our information, there was a decent chance we wouldn't receive it simply out of spite. 

We decided we would have an adventure and go get the package. There was gluten-free flour and coffee in there, after all! No way should we leave it to chance.

Christina thought that having Simon would be to our advantage: “If you can get him to cry too, that might be helpful.” After consulting my giant Lima map and figuring out how we might get there, I thought it might take an hour to get there, an hour back, and maybe a half hour at the post office. We’d be back in time for lunch and Simon could take a nap at our apartment. My nerves were a little fried after I read in my Lonely Planet book that they considered the post office’s neighborhood "one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Lima." Great!

The next day, we walked about 10 minutes to a bigger street, then we caught a bus to take us to the Metropolitano line that would take us across the city. We took that until we got to the street of the post office, then caught a mini bus and took it the rest of the way to the post office. That took an hour and a half.

Conveniently, as we walked up to the post office building, Simon fell asleep in the sling.

Simon asleep in the sling, not on the post office trip but during an artisan visit... you can see how  lovely a sleeping boy can be!

Then we went to not one, not two different windows/people to be processed, but FIVE.

First, the woman who took our paper and inspected my passport told me that I couldn't pick up the package because I wasn't Manos Amigas. Then she told me I needed two copies of my passport and then I'd be called to another window.

Sam had to leave the post office and find a copy place to make said copies. Twenty minutes later I was called up to the window; the official filled out some paperwork and the box is brought out. That was pretty easy, I thought. How great that we are about to get the box!

Not so fast. Two officials cut open the box and started inspecting all of the items in it, making a pile of loot on the table next to it. Sam and I were elbowing each other: look at all that Equal Exchange coffee!

I was quietly panicking that they were about to confiscate items in the box, which would have been excruciating after having a glimpse of all the chocolate, coffee, gluten-free treats, etc, just on the other side of a plate of glass. I was holding my doctor's order for a strict gluten-free diet in case I needed to plead my case to someone, and Sam was whispering quit fidgeting, just look normal.

They didn’t say much to us, just filled out a massive amount of paperwork, taped the box back up, and directed us to wait for official window #3. After another 15 minutes of waiting, I was called to another postal person, who typed a crazy amount of information into the computer for an eternity. Either that, or he just pretended to type while surfing the web!

Finally, he gave me still more paperwork and told me to go to line #4 for my box processing. Sam waited in this line while I sat holding Simon, miraculously still sleeping through the cacophony of this giant waiting room, replete with an intercom in frequent use, buzzers, crashing doors, wailing children, and a loud TV.

The official woman in line #4 stamped information on various sheets of paper multiple times, asked me to fill in passport information, typed still more information into the computer, and we signed for the box. Then we went to door #5 to actually retrieve our box. Finally. We quickly discussed: Should we open it up now and eat some chocolate? No, maybe they would realize their mistake and take it back. Let’s leave.

As we're leaving the post office complex, the security guard stopped us, inspected our paperwork, and carefully wrote something important in his log book. Simon woke up as we left, having slept through all hour and 15 minutes of our post office experience.

We hailed a taxi back to the bus station (and I immediately made sure I could open the doors from the backseat!). The bus was packed. We were exhausted. We got off at our stop and decided to walk until we found the bus to take us the rest of the way (a 30 minute walk). We never found the bus and just walked verrrrrry slowly until we passed a chicken place 8 blocks from our apartment and rewarded ourselves with lunch - at 3 pm - complete with pisco sours for us and chicha morada for Simon.

We got back to our place at 4, opened the box, and commenced rejoicing at all of our loot while devouring Trader Joes’ dried cherries and Swiss chocolate. 

What an adventure! Now we’re hopping on buses like pros and I am even negotiating cab fares with taxi drivers! Who knows what the next package delivery might bring? (Just please include some Equal Exchange coffee and chocolate!)

The good, the bad, and the quirky

Instead of the whistling and the other instruments in “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” theme music, imagine this post being set to that music but played by the Andean flute-pipe instrument. More appropriate!

The good: 

The food: From the sopas, huevos, and nearly every cena (dinner) at the señora’s house to the crema de zapallo (squash soup) at the Hare Krishna restaurant, the falafel/hummus at Café Beirut, and the chicken and salsas at the pollería down the street from our apartment, the food is incredible and delicious. We have eaten fantastic food. We even found a Mexican restaurant that is as good and as authentic as our favorite Indy restaurant. I want to take cooking classes to try to more accurately replicate the Peruvian flavors in our home here.

Pisco sours are the drink of choice here and we are enjoying sampling them around the city. Pisco is grape brandy, and to make the sours you add simple syrup, lime juice, and a beaten egg white. Dangerously delicious!

Don't worry, Simon is enjoying his water, not his own pisco!

This bar, just off of a square in Lima’s downtown, is our favorite to date. Sam’s also enjoyed the pisco sour that our language school offered as a congratulations to each student upon finishing their studies – a lovely tradition, no?


Parks are everywhere, tucked in between side streets, along the oceanfront, in the spaces between apartment buildings. Most are small. Some of them have exciting things like stones that we can step up and down on; one near us actually has a sandbox that the youngest member of our family particularly enjoys. The parks are fabulous and a constant source of amusement as well as beauty.

The bad: La contaminacion, the pollution, is horrible. Plumes of black smoke billow from nearly every vehicle on the street. Awful and relentless. And somehow people still smoke cigarettes! 


We live on a really busy street and although there is a tall wall separating us from the street, there's no separating the air. A couple of days after moving into our apartment, we were trying to figure out what this black stuff was that we were somehow tracking around the floor. And even after sweeping and mopping the floor, it's still not clean; I often take a napkin to pick up food that Simon's thrown onto the floor and it's black after touching the floor. Finally we realized the blackness  was all the dirt and soot and black air particles that filter down and covering the floor. Oh. 


So while we can clean every day, we can't really adjust how we breathe. We’re more than a little worried that all this exposure will result in asthma for Simon, but we’re also not sure what to do otherwise. Tips?

The quirky:

La ciudad morada: During the entire month of October, Lima celebrated El Señor de los Milagros, or el cristo morado (The Christ of the Miracles, or the Purple Christ). There’s an icon that was brought out four times and paraded through different routes of the city. Women got up very early those mornings and covered the pavement for the entire route with flower petals. And it’s not just a beautiful carpet of flower petals; detailed images from Christ’s life were designed with these petals. Impressive! I haven’t seen these for myself; these routes were far too crowded for us to get anywhere near them. Anyway, what I see as the endearing and quirky part are the clothes. People wore purple clothing as a sign of their penitence during October. It might be a purple scarf, it might be a purple dress, but there was purple everywhere. I would estimate I saw purple on every third person. The snappiest version I saw was on a businessman – light purple dress shirt, dark purple silk tie, black suit.

The call of the wild: On our first afternoon in Lima, we kept hearing this strange, loud call from down the street. It sounded like a weird animal, possibly in pain. My bet was on an ostrich; Sam thought it was more likely a peacock. I just hoped that it wouldn’t cry all night like that. We didn’t know what was normal for Lima – maybe everyone had a pet ostrich. I finally asked the señora what that sound was. It’s the ice cream man, blowing through his funky horn as he pedals his freezer of treats on his bicycle. Right. Slightly more plausible than a pet peacock. 

So the ice cream calls are very much a part of the background music of the day. And they swarm places where there are kids. When school gets out, there might be four of them pedaling through the parental traffic. The parks invariably have one or two cycling through. I want one of the horns, not the ice cream. While I'm at it, that bicycle looks pretty awesome too; look at all that frozen storage space! Hmm, maybe that is what I need to peddle my homemade ice cream while pedaling around Indy...

Which llama? We were looking at a statue in central Lima that has a woman’s figure at the base. She has a llama, the animal llama, on her head!

Apparently the word for flame in Spanish is llama, just like the word for the animal, and when the order for a statue with a llama on her head came in, the workers didn’t really think too much about it, they just put a llama on her head as directed. Here’s a closer view.

Our doors: We live in the ground floor apartment and there is a family that lives above us. We each have a separate entrance to our homes, with separate keys, from the street. They both open onto the same patio/parking space. None of us uses the other's door from the street. Why don't we just have one door? Weird!

The doors that open from the street onto the patio/parking space

Simon shows off which door is ours

We survived the señora

After an early post about our struggles with our host family, several good friends wrote with some supportive words. One phrase in particular stuck with me: “you will survive the señora!” That became a sort of mantra over our month in the homestay.

I should preface all these comments with the statement that Sam is not necessarily in agreement with all of them. We have different memories of what happened and how we felt about it. But since this is my blog, I get to put my perspective on it. He can blog about it if he so desires!

One month – I tend to believe I can do anything for a minimum of three months and most situations I think I could stick out for two years. So one month? We’re having difficulties? Piece of cake; at least it wasn’t three months. But I was surprised by how long that month was. After a week and a half, we considered moving out but I really liked the food and dreaded the thought of being in a hotel for several weeks. At two and a half weeks, we were pretty certain we could stick it out but the situation was slightly outrageous. At three weeks, I considered leaving school early and traveling for two weeks instead of one.

I’m glad we finished our month, but it wasn’t easy. And I’m left with conflicting feelings about the experience.

On the one hand, the family clearly loved Simon. The señora bought him a car, the type of toy he’s been coveting from every other little kid at the park and would play with at any opportunity, so he’d have something nice to play with at our apartment. She lavished him with her versions of love and affection. She was so proud of Simon and bragged about him and his good behavior to everyone who visited.

On the other hand, we had real power struggles over boundaries with Simon and food (both for me as well as Simon). I’ll give a couple of examples.

Most group meals bordered on the comical in their carnival aspect. Everyone watched, silently, how Simon ate his food and the señora would narrate as if she were doing play-by-play for a ballgame: “Look how he eats with his hands! How funny! He’s like a little monkey. Oh, now he’s going for the rice! He likes it! Have more. Have a bite, here. Eat it! Eat! Oh, he just wants his mama. Always his mama!” (Mimicking Simon) “Mami! Mami! Maybe your mama will let you have a little treat after dinner? Maybe she’ll let you have some special cake that is for the king of the house?”

She loved to hold him, but Simon didn't like to be held. While he warmed up to her somewhat, he would frequently cry out and protest when she picked him up and handled him. No amount of protest on his part could convince her that he did not want to be held by her. I eventually would take him back, but she would  usually start mimicking Simon's cries and, clearly annoyed, mutter, "Mami! Mami! Ya!" 

Yes, we stepped in to set boundaries. But that didn’t make us popular. The señora pouted when we asserted ourselves. At the same time that I wanted to extricate Simon from certain situations, I also wanted to let things unfold and not swoop in at the first sign of his being upset. I would give Simon little pep talks in our room: “You are doing a good job of letting the señora know when you don’t like what she is doing!” Those pep talks were probably about as much for me as they were for him.

One of my food struggles with the señora was over brown rice and quinoa. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m celiac and therefore cannot eat gluten. An unrelated issue is that I also am intolerant to white rice. So, I’m a fun dinner guest two times over.

When we first moved in, I was impressed with how often we had quinoa. While it’s native to the Andes, I had heard that it wasn’t frequently eaten here. As it’s a grain I can eat, and is extremely easy to cook, we ate lots of it back home. I asked at one dinner if they normally ate quinoa or if it was because of my dietary restrictions. Quinoa is a way of life for us, she told me. Excellent! So they normally eat this; it’s not just because of me. I was relieved.

Brown rice was trickier. I bought a bag of brown rice and made some once when I was sick; she showed me how to use the rice cooker. For the first two weeks, she would serve dinner with a plate of brown rice and a plate of white rice, so that each person could serve herself/himself accordingly. But then a second Japanese person moved into the house, and all the brown rice disappeared. All white rice, all the time. Instead of us being able to serve ourselves from the foods on the table, she gave us plated food. Everyone else (including Simon!) got full plates of food, including white rice. She gave me a dessert plate of whatever the vegetable option was. This was about a third of the food that everyone else had. I was perpetually hungry and would eat energy bars when I got back to our room. Finally, one morning I got up the courage to ask for brown rice; I was having a big internal debate over asking for more food, since I saw my request as being extremely impolite. But hunger – and the fact that we were paying a lot to live there and be fed there! – finally won out.

This is an abridged version of our exchange.

Alison: Can I make some brown rice so that I can eat rice when everyone else has rice?

The señora: No, the rice cooker has white rice in it. You can’t make brown rice.

A: Can I make it on the stove in another pot?

TS: No, I don’t know how to make it in a pot.

A: Oh, I know how to make it. I made it all the time back home.

TS: But it’s different here. It uses too much water. I don’t know the quantities to use because Lima is at a different altitude. The rice cooker does it in an hour but it will take too long on the stove. You’ll use too much gas. Maybe the maid could make quinoa, I don’t know.

A: Sure, quinoa would be fine. I just want something to eat when everyone else has rice.

TS: But we have to wash every single pot and pan and plate and utensil today because we are fumigating. The maid already has too much work. I don’t know that she can make quinoa too. You can buy rice to go at a restaurant.

A: Brown rice at a restaurant here? Where?

TS: All of them!

A: Would you prefer that I do that?

TS: Do whatever you want!

There is no brown rice readily available at restaurants, so getting it to go wasn’t truly an option. I gave up and figured I’d stock up on chocolate or raisins. That night, there was quinoa for me to eat. I thanked her for it, and she went on a diatribe about how the maid had to wash it for 30 minutes because quinoa is poisonous if you don’t wash it well.

This is why I started going to bed at 8:30 – I was exhausted from exchanges like these!

I appreciate that she was careful to serve me food I could have, and delicious to boot. I’m thankful that with a house full of people with different food preferences, she was able to accommodate us. But at the same time, we were paying her to do this.

We recently visited the señora so we could pick up several gifts she had given Simon but which we couldn’t take with us at the time. And it was a nice visit; she had made a special quinoa pudding for us to have as a snack (the irony of being served quinoa was not lost on me). We sat and visited while Simon played in the patio and babbled with the señora. She urged us to come have Sunday lunch with them on occasion, and invited us to come for Christmas.

I appreciate those offers and believe they are genuine. They made me wonder if things could have been as bad as they were. And then I open my journal and read about all the other occasions I haven’t described here, such as the time she told us we drank too much water and needed to buy it instead of having it at the house; the time I had to scrub a skillet several times over the course of a day to pacify her (even though the maid did the dishwashing); the time she told us we could no longer do laundry at the house because the maid was refusing to do any laundry and the señora didn’t know how to operate the washing machine, and then we found out everyone else’s laundry was still being done by the maid; etc.

At the end of the day, I suppose I’m glad we had that experience. Just like everything else, it was a time to learn and adjust and problem-solve as a family…. And the hardest part of that experience, the homestay, is over. Ya! 

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!

We made it through the first week!

And so it begins… our year of magical traveling kicked off last Saturday, when we had an epic day of traveling. After an early morning flight to Miami, 8 hours hanging out in the airport there, and a 5 ½ hour flight to Lima, we arrived late at night, breezed through customs, were greeted by a giant throng of people, and were launched into a relatively warm Lima night. It took another hour or so to reach our hotel, and the epic day finally concluded. Simon was a real trooper; his day began at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 12:30 a.m., and still he was his normal fabulous self. (And he liked carrying his backpack full of his treats – see the pic.) He had a blast in the taxi from the airport: for the first time outside of a carseat and facing forward. He joyfully called out every car, truck, and bus he saw for the first 20 minutes or so... which meant he was pointing and exclaiming nonstop.

We’ve finished our first week here: a week of Spanish classes and a week living with a family. This household is very international: the señor is from Peru, the señora is from Colombia, and they have a 10 year old son. There is a retired Canadian banker who is here for another couple of weeks who is also studying at our Spanish school, a young Japanese businessman, and then the three of us from the States.

It takes about 20-25 minutes to walk to our school. More on that in another post. It’s nice to have a 40-50 minute walk in each day, something we didn’t necessarily do in Indy.

We have three weeks more of the Spanish classes/homestay.  It’s clear that the family loves Simon, but their ways of expressing it are a little much for us at times. The señora and her son have very big personalities and are very in-your-face. (Such as: one time Simon and I came out of the bathroom and were immediately surrounded by the señora, her son, and the dog. The idea of personal space is very different here!) Simon tends to be a little timid until he feels comfortable, and so the first week was full of them picking him up and trying to get him to do certain things, with him having a panicked look on his face and calling/reaching out to me. I was trying to set a balance between not offending them and responding to Simon’s pleas.

Maybe it’s culture shock, and maybe it’s just that I’m too sensitive/take things too personally, but several things are make me uncomfortable here in the house. The one that I’ll mention today is that the señora is full of opinions and is very vocal about them. Here’s a sampling: you guys are crazy for traveling with a small child; he needs to stay at home more; he needs to be with other children in a day care; he needs more clothing; you shouldn’t let him use sign language because boys learn to speak later than girls anyway and he needs to learn how to speak instead of just using his hands to communicate – it’s too easy for him; he should eat differently. Whatever!

In general, I am trying to just let her express her opinions and then just keep doing whatever we would do anyway. We probably are pretty crazy in some ways, but I think it’s pretty funny that she thinks we are doing everything wrong, yet she keeps commenting on how well-behaved Simon is, how he never cries, etc. Of course, part of that is the luck of the draw. But I’d also like to think part of it is because of how we are parenting him.

If it weren’t for our concern about Simon, it would be a pretty ideal set up. The food is amazing, there are lots of parks nearby, it’s on a quiet street, the family is generally pretty welcoming. And then the señora tries to force food into Simon’s mouth or take him into a different room when he is crying for me… no. So, in general, we reformulate our strategy day by day for dealing with the señora and Simon. If you’ve had any experience with Latin American cultures and your children, I would love to hear your experiences/recommendations!

The food in the house is incredibly delicious, of course. The juices, a different one every morning, made minutes before we come to breakfast, are fantastic. The soups at dinner… I don’t even need more food than that, if could just have two or three bowls of it. They are so, so delicious. I asked the señora this morning if she’d teach me how to make the juices and she said no. No!??! Wow, I was thinking it would be a compliment to her as well as something that Sam, Simon, and I could continue to enjoy once we have our own apartment, but perhaps we’ll just have to wing it. She said, essentially, that there wasn’t anything to it and that sometimes she would put spices in it that perhaps I couldn’t eat, being celiac, and since there wasn’t a recipe, then no. Oh well. Maybe now I’ll just ask each morning what is in it and take secret notes!

It will be nice when we feel more comfortable and at ease with things. Everything takes time, a lesson I need to relearn every single day!